THE CAPITAL STRUCTURE CHOICE: NEW EVIDENCE FOR A DYNAMIC TRADEOFF MODEL

Most academic insights about corporate capital structure decisions come from models that focus on the trade-off between the tax benefits and financial distress costs of debt financing. But empirical tests of corporate capital structure indicate that actual debt ratios are considerably different from those predicted by the models, casting doubt on whether most companies have leverage targets at all. In particular, there is considerable evidence that corporate leverage ratios reflect in large part the tendency of profitable companies to use their excess cash flow to pay down debt, while unprofitable companies build up higher leverage ratios. Such behavior is consistent with a competing theory of capital structure known as the "pecking order" model, in which management's main objectives are to preserve financing flexibility and avoid issuing equity.
The results of the authors' recent study suggest that although past profits are an important predictor of observed debt ratios at any given time, companies nevertheless often make financing and stock repurchase decisions designed to offset the effects of past profitability and move their debt ratios toward their target capital structures. This evidence provides support for a compromise theory called the dynamic tradeoff model, which says that although companies often deviate from their leverage targets, over the longer run they take measures to close the gap between their actual and targeted leverage ratios.     

‘Hot’ Debt Markets and Capital Structure

This paper examines the motives of debt issuance during hot‐debt market periods and its impact on capital structure over the period 1970–2006. We find that perceived capital market conditions as favourable, an indication of market timing, and adverse selection costs of equity (i.e., information asymmetry) are important frictions that lead certain firms to issue more debt in hot‐ than cold‐debt market periods. Using alternative hot‐debt market issuance measures and controlling for other effects, such as structural shifts in the debt market, industry, book‐to‐market, price‐to‐earnings, size, tax rates, debt market conditions and adjustment costs based on debt credit ratings, we find that firms with high adverse selection costs issue substantially more (less) debt when market conditions are perceived as hot (cold). Moreover, the results indicate that there is a persistent hot‐debt market effect on the capital structure of debt issuers; hot‐debt market issuing firms do not actively rebalance their leverage to stay within an optimal capital structure range.     

中国上市公司资本结构的长期动态调整

本文基于资本结构理论和实证研究的最新成果,构建一个综合反映影响公司资本结构决策各种因素的模型,通过两阶段回归,刻画我国上市公司资本结构长期动态调整的轨迹。我们首先利用Tobit模型预测公司目标资本结构,然后利用局部调整模型综合检验公司资金缺口、市场时机、股价变化、目标缺口和目标资本结构变化如何影响公司资本结构的动态调整。研究发现资金缺口、市场时机和股价变化确实导致公司偏离目标资本结构,其中,资金缺口的影响最大。但是,它们在随后阶段产生了反转效应。实证结果表明,尽管公司的历史显著地影响了它们的资本结构,但经过一段时间,公司的资本结构会趋近于其动态的目标资本结构,公司资本结构变化的决定性因素是目标资本结构。     

Changing Tastes: Estimating Changing Attribute Prices in Hedonic and Repeat Sales Models

This paper examines the information content of debt raising and refinancing activities of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) in normal and tight credit markets. Based on a sample of 340 debt announcements made by REITs in Japan (J-REITs) between 2002 and 2011, we observe that they are associated with a positive stock price reaction, averaging 1.05 % over a 4-day window. Stratifying the sample into debt raising and debt refinancing, we find strong evidence that the positive economic gains associated with debt announcements flowed from the pool of debt refinancing announcements. They registered a significant mean return of 1.20 % over the 4-day window, as opposed to 0.07 % for the pool of debt raising activities. Further investigation shows that the positive market reaction to debt refinancing is more pronounced during the credit crunch of 2007 to 2009. Although debt refinancing does not lead to any change in the firm’s capital structure, it still contains valuable information about the firm’s prospect, especially in tight credit markets.     

Agency costs,taxes and debt: The UK evidence

This paper provides an empirical examination of the impact of the corporation tax and agency costs on firms' capital structure decisions. Our evidence suggests that the agency costs are the main determinants of corporate borrowing. Consistent with the agency theory, we find that firms that have fewer growth options have more debt in their capital structure. Moreover, our results show that debt mitigates the free cash flow problem and that firms that are more likely to be diversified and less prone to bankruptcy are highly geared. the negative effect of insider shareholding on leverage disappears, however; when all the agency mechanisms are accounted for. In addition, we find that, in the long run, companies that are tax exhausted exhibit significantly lower debt ratios than tax-paying firms. However, in the short run, firms' capital structure decisions are not affected by taxation.     

大股东股权质押与上市公司资本运作

资本运作一方面可以提高股价,另一方面可以让公司股票停牌,那么是否会成为大股东度过质押风险的方式呢？基于此,本文以2007—2018年我国A股上市公司为研究对象,考察了大股东股权质押对上市公司资本运作的影响及其作用机制。研究发现:(1)大股东股权质押比例越高,上市公司进行资本运作的可能性越大; 这一关系在质押股权面临的平仓风险越高和非国有控股的上市公司中更为显著。(2)机制检验发现,随着质押比例的提高,上市公司进行资本运作后的停牌时间越长;从股价提升的效果来看,资本运作在短期内能提高股价,缓解质押风险,但从长期来看效果并不显著。(3)上市公司进行资本运作的方式主要为股权转让、资产收购和资产剥离;其中,大股东主要利用资产收购和资产剥离增加停牌时间,利用股权转让助推股价。在控制了潜在的内生性问题影响以及各种稳健性检验下,上述结论仍然成立。     

Foreign capital raising by Indian firms: An examination of domestic stock price response

We examine the domestic stock price response to foreign capital issuance by Indian firms. Firms have extensively used foreign equity and convertible foreign debt sources since 1994. The role of foreign investment bankers, size of the issue, firm's growth opportunities, and other factors are examined in the cross-sectional analysis of domestic stock price response. We find that firms experience positive stock price response to both equity and debt issues abroad, with greater response to issuance of American Depositary Receipts (ADRs), and financing high corporate growth.     

Capital Structure and the Market for Corporate Control: The Defensive Role of Debt Financing

A capital structure theory based on corporate control considerations is presented. The optimal debt level balances a decrease in the probability of acquisition against a higher share of the synergy for the target's shareholders. This leads to the following implications: (i) the probability of firms becoming acquisition targets decreases with their leverage, (ii) acquirers' share of the total equity gain increases with targets' leverage, (iii) when acquisitions are initiated, targets' stock price, targets' debt value, and acquirers' firm value increase, and (iv) during the acquisition, target firms' stock price changes further; the expected change is zero and the variance decreases with targets' debt level.     

Do executive stock options induce excessive risk taking?

We examine whether executive stock options can induce excessive risk taking by managers in firms’ security issue decisions. We find that CEOs whose wealth is more sensitive to stock return volatility due to their option holdings are more likely to choose debt over equity as a capital-raising vehicle. More importantly, the pattern holds not only in firms that are underlevered relative to their optimal capital structure but also in overlevered firms. This evidence is inconsistent with executive stock options aligning the interests of managers and shareholders; rather, it supports the hypothesis that stock options sometimes make managers take on too much risk and in the process pursue suboptimal capital structure policies.     

The effects of capital structure change on security prices: A study of exchange offers

This study considers the impact of capital structure change announcements on security prices. Statistically significant price adjustments in firms' common stock, preferred stock and debt related to these announcements are documented and alternative causes for these price changes are examined. The evidence is consistent with both corporate tax and wealth redistribution effects. There is also evidence that firms make decisions which do not maximize stockholder wealth. In addition, a new approach to testing the significance of public announcements on security returns is presented.     

Proactive Leverage Increases and The Value of Financial Flexibility

Traditional tradeoff models of corporate capital structure, although still featured prominently in finance textbooks and widely accepted by practitioners, have been criticized by financial economists for doing a poor job of explaining observed debt ratios. Moreover, the observed ratios are far less stable than what would be predicted by the standard tradeoff models. In a study published several years ago in the Review of Financial Studies, the authors of this article aimed to shed more light on the underlying forces governing capital structure decisions by analyzing a set of major changes in capital structure in which companies initiated large increases in leverage through substantial new borrowings. They then attempted to explain why these companies chose to increase leverage and how their capital structures changed during the years after the large debt issues. As summarized in this article, the authors' findings indicate, first of all, that the large debt financings were used primarily to fund major corporate investments—and not, for example, to make large distributions to shareholders. And the changes in leverage ratios that came after the debt offerings were driven far more by the evolution of the companies' realized cash flows and their investment opportunities than by deliberate or decisive attempts to rebalance their capital structures toward a stationary target. In fact, many of the companies chose to take on even more debt when faced with cash‐flow deficits, despite operating with leverage that was already well above any reasonable estimate of their estimated target leverage. At the same time, companies that generated financial surpluses used them to reduce debt, even when their leverage had fallen well below their estimated targets. Taken as a whole, the findings of the authors' study support the idea that unused debt capacity represents an important source of financial flexibility, and that preserving such flexibility—and making use of it when valuable investment opportunities materialize—may well be the critical missing link in connecting capital structure theory with observed corporate behavior.     

Distress risk premia in expected stock and bond returns

Prior studies find that shareholders’ strategic actions over debtholders are significant for stock prices but not for bond prices. I find that for firms with private and public debt, strategic default has no significant effect on distress risk premia in expected stock or bond returns, suggesting that the dispersion of bondholders greatly weakens the shareholder advantage effect. The shareholder advantage effect on stock prices is only significant for firms with only private debt and to some degree affected by the dispersion of stockholders and complexity in capital structure. Overall, renegotiation friction helps explain the cross-sectional implications of strategic default for stock and bond prices.     

Concentrated Ownership, No Dividend Payout Requirement and Capital Structure of REITs: Evidence from Turkey

This paper studies empirically the capital structure of Turkish REITs as they offer unique and so far untested angles. They do not have to pay out dividends, yet enjoy the exemption from paying corporate taxes since their legal foundation in 1998. Several financial meltdowns occurred in the last three decades, keeping investors with a doubt about Turkey??s financial and political stability. The last meltdown in 2001 is part of the sample period. Findings show that Turkish REITs employ little long-term debt in their capital structure. The legal requirement that a leader entrepreneur be present with a minimum equity position of 25% introduces the agency problem between the majority and minority owners. The leader entrepreneurs, as non-taxable institutional investors, appear to dictate Turkish REITs?? dividend and debt policies and deplete REITs?? dividends, causing them to go to the long-term debt market. The financial meltdown of 2001 exerts negative short-term and positive long-term influence on the debt ratios while inflation??s effect is negative. Firm size, REITs?? engagement in development and stock market development influence debt ratios positively; tangibility and a few firm, ownership, and country-specific determinants appear to have either mixed or no influence on Turkish REITs?? debt policies.     

SOME NEW EVIDENCE ON WHY COMPANIES USE CONVERTIBLE BONDS

The popular argument for convertibles holds that they provide issuers with "cheap" debt and allow them to sell equity at a premium over current value. Objecting to the "free lunch" implied by such an argument, financial economists have offered other explanations that show how the combination of debt and equity built into convertibles can serve to reduce information and agency costs faced by companies and their investors.
In this article, the authors use the results of their recent study to reconcile the two positions. Following Jeremy Stein's view of convertibles as "backdoor equity," the authors argue that convertible bond financing is an attractive alternative for companies that have large growth potential but find both conventional debt and equity financing very costly. Such companies are often deterred from funding their capital investments with straight public bonds by their high risk, relatively short track records, and high expected costs of financial distress. At the same time, the information "asymmetry" between management and outside investors can make equity very expensive in such cases. In layman's terms, management may feel that the company's share price does not accurately reflect its growth prospects, or be concerned that the mere announcement of a new equity offering will cause the share price to fall sharply.
To the extent the stock market is persuaded that management's choice of convertibles is based on this combination of promising growth prospects with limited financing options, it is likely to respond more favorably to the announcement of a new convertible offering. The authors furnish evidence in support of this argument by reporting that the market reacts less negatively to those convertible issuers with higher post-issue capital expenditures and higher market-to-book ratios, but with lower credit ratings and higher (post-offering) debt-equity ratios.     

Capital structure policies in Europe: Survey evidence

In this paper we present the results of an international survey among 313 CFOs on capital structure choice. We document several interesting insights on how theoretical concepts are being applied by professionals in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, and France and we directly compare our results with previous findings from the US our results emphasize the presence of pecking-order behavior. At the same time this behavior is not driven by asymmetric information considerations. The static trade-off theory is confirmed by the importance of a target debt ratio in general, but also specifically by tax effects and bankruptcy costs. Overall, we find remarkably low disparities across countries, despite the presence of significant institutional differences. We find that private firms differ in many respects from publicly listed firms, e.g. listed firms use their stock price for the timing of new issues. Finally, we do not find substantial evidence that agency problems are important in capital structure choice.     

Do firms have leverage targets? Evidence from acquisitions

In the context of large acquisitions, we provide evidence on whether firms have target capital structures. We examine how deviations from these targets affect how bidders choose to finance acquisitions and how they adjust their capital structure following the acquisitions. We show that when a bidder's leverage is over its target level, it is less likely to finance the acquisition with debt and more likely to finance the acquisition with equity. Also, we find a positive association between the merger-induced changes in target and actual leverage, and we show that bidders incorporate more than two-thirds of the change to the merged firm's new target leverage. Following debt-financed acquisitions, managers actively move the firm back to its target leverage, reversing more than 75% of the acquisition's leverage effect within five years. Overall, our results are consistent with a model of capital structure that includes a target level and adjustment costs.     

The impact of nominal stock price on ex-dividend price responses

In this paper, we examine whether nominal stock price can help to explain the ex-dividend day anomaly where stock prices drop by less than the dividend amount on the ex-dividend date. We find that stocks with lower nominal prices have ex-dividend day price drops that are more consistent with theoretical predictions based on an efficient market. After controlling for factors that have been previously documented to influence ex-dividend day stock price behavior, price-drop-to-dividend ratios are closer to one for lower priced stocks. To further explore this phenomenon, we examine the change in the price-drop-to-dividend ratio around stock splits. Firms that split their shares have a larger price-drop-to-dividend ratio after the split, and companies that reverse split their shares have a smaller price-drop-to-dividend ratio after the split. Our evidence indicates that ex-dividend day stock price behavior is influenced by the nominal price of a share and that this relation could also influence the decision to split a firm’s shares.     

Financial Restructuring in Fresh‐Start Chapter 11 Reorganizations

We find that firms substantially reduce their debt burden in “fresh‐start” Chapter 11 reorganizations, yet they emerge with higher debt ratios than what is typical in their respective industries. While cross‐sectional regressions reveal that post‐reorganization debt ratios are more in line with the predictions of the static trade‐off theory, they also reveal that pre‐reorganization debt ratios affect post‐reorganization debt ratios. Collectively, these results suggest that impediments in Chapter 11 prevent firms from completely resetting their capital structures. We also find that firms that reported positive operating income leading up to Chapter 11 emerge faster, suggesting that it is quicker to remedy strictly financial distress than economic distress.     

THE LONG-RUN PERFORMANCE OF CONVERTIBLE DEBT ISSUERS

We examine the long-run operating and stock price performance of 828 convertible debt issuers. Relative to matched, nonissuing firms, convertible debt issuers have small improvements in operating performance before the offer and significant declines in operating performance from pre- to post-issue. We examine the relation between several factors and operating performance. We find that for some pre- to post-issue periods, operating performance changes are positively related to firm leverage and the callability of the bond, and negatively related to performance run-up before the offer and investment in new assets. We also find some evidence that firms that issued equity in the three years before their convertible debt issue have larger declines in performance after the offer. Relative to matched, nonissuing firms, convertible debt issuers have superior stock price performance before the offer and significantly poor performance after the issue.     

Zero-leverage policy and stock price crash risk: Evidence from Korea

This study examines the difference in stock price crash risk between zero-leverage and non-zero-leverage firms. We find that zero-leverage firms have a significantly higher future stock price crash risk than non-zero-leverage firms. Next, we find that the positive relation between zero-leverage policy and future stock price crash risk is more pronounced when firms have higher controlling shareholders' ownership and foreign ownership. We also find that the positive relation is more pronounced for firms with low cash holdings than for those with high cash holdings. Further, we find that the positive relation is stronger for dividend-paying firms than non-dividend-paying firms. Our results are robust to alternative estimation specifications and endogeneity concerns. Overall, our findings shed light on the extent to which extreme corporate financial policy has an impact on future stock price crash risk. Our empirical evidence also provides meaningful implications for how stakeholders (especially investors) predict stock price crash risk in the context of extremely conservative capital structure.