Optimum Capital Structure Redefined

Within a dynamic framework of capital growth and income generation, optimum capital structure of a firm is redefined under two alternative hypotheses. By the optimum control theory, it is shown that under conditions of perfect competition optimum equity/debt ratio of a firm can be uniquely determined in intertemporal maximization models of investor behavior. The result is new, but it is juxtaposed in the vast body of existing literature and finally compared with the Lintner-Sau and Modigliani-Miller models.     

Bank Capital Requirements, Capital Structure and Regulation

This paper studies the impact of capital requirements, deposit insurance and franchise value on a bank’s capital structure. We find that properly regulated banks voluntarily choose to maintain capital in excess of the minimum required. Central to this decision is both firm franchise value and the ability of regulators to place banks in receivership stripping equity holders of firm value. These features of our model help explain both the capital structure of the large mortgage Government Sponsored Enterprises and the recent increase in risk taking through leverage by financial institutions. The insights gained from the model are useful in guiding the discussion of financial regulatory reforms.     

资本监管与银行最优资本结构

资本监管已成为现代商业银行监管体系的核心,而现有研究对资本监管的重要性缺乏系统的理论研究。基于此,本文从MM理论出发,逐步分析并得出:银行自身经营的特殊性、银行作为一般企业所追求的企业价值最大化行为以及银行作为特殊企业所得到的银行安全网保护等因素使得银行形成不断提高最优资产负债率和降低资本充足率的内在机制,逐步分析不同情形下的银行最优资本结构,进而说明资本监管对于维系银行经营的稳健性和审慎性以及减少银行破产而导致的负外部性等方面的重要作用。     

Human Capital,Bankruptcy, and Capital Structure

We derive the optimal labor contract for a levered firm in an economy with perfectly competitive capital and labor markets. Employees become entrenched under this contract and so face large human costs of bankruptcy. The firm's optimal capital structure therefore depends on the trade‐off between these human costs and the tax benefits of debt. Optimal debt levels consistent with those observed in practice emerge without relying on frictions such as moral hazard or asymmetric information. Consistent with empirical evidence, persistent idiosyncratic differences in leverage across firms also result. In addition, wages should have explanatory power for firm leverage.     

Credit Ratings and Capital Structure

This paper examines to what extent credit ratings directly affect capital structure decisions. The paper outlines discrete costs (benefits) associated with firm credit rating level differences and tests whether concerns for these costs (benefits) directly affect debt and equity financing decisions. Firms near a credit rating upgrade or downgrade issue less debt relative to equity than firms not near a change in rating. This behavior is consistent with discrete costs (benefits) of rating changes but is not explained by traditional capital structure theories. The results persist within previous empirical tests of the pecking order and tradeoff capital structure theories.     

银行业地方法人机构资本构成及补充途径

本文从资本规模及构成的静态方面和资本补充的动态方面进行分析,揭示银行业地方法人机构存在的问题和面临的现实约束,提出了地方法人机构强化资本管理的相关建议.     

Does the Source of Capital Affect Capital Structure?

Prior work on leverage implicitly assumes capital availabilitydepends solely on firm characteristics. However, market frictionsthat make capital structure relevant may also be associatedwith a firm’s source of capital. Examining this intuition,we find firms that have access to the public bond markets, asmeasured by having a debt rating, have significantly more leverage.Although firms with a rating are fundamentally different, thesedifferences do not explain our findings. Even after controllingfor firm characteristics that determine observed capital structure,and instrumenting for the possible endogeneity of having a rating,firms with access have 35% more debt.     

一切从"结构优化"出发

2004年新春伊始,当投资者还在为贬市的涨跌狐疑不定时,新华社2月1日正式刊发了《国务院关于推进资本市场改革开放和稳定发展的若干意见》(简称《意见》)。该《意见》涵盖了我国资本市场发展的历史、指导思想和任务,并就目前中国资中市场备受关注的几个问题如资本市场体系建设问题、上市公司质量提升问题、股份全流通问题提出了具体意见。鉴于《意见》的本身对中国资本市场发展所具有的重要意义,本刊特别就该《意见》中提出的几个问题邀请相关人士加以分析,以飨读者。     

Capital Structure and Debt Priority

We study a defaultable firm's debt priority structure in a simple structural model where the firm issues senior and junior bonds and is subject to both liquidity and solvency risks. Assuming that the absolute priority rule prevails and that liquidation is immediate upon default, we determine the firm's interior optimal priority structure along with its optimal capital structure. We also obtain closed‐form solutions for the market values of the firm's debt and equity. We find that the magnitude of the spread differential between junior and senior bond yields is positively, but not linearly related to the total debt level and the riskiness of assets. Finally, we provide an in‐depth analysis of probabilities of default and the term structure of credit spreads.     

Influence Costs and Capital Structure

This paper analyzes the role of capital structure in the presence of intrafirm influence activities. The hierarchical structure of large organizations inevitably generates attempts by members to influence the distributive consequences of organizational decisions. In corporations, for example, top management can reallocate or eliminate quasi rents earned by their employees, while at the same time, they must rely on these employees to provide them with information vital to their decision making. This creates the opportunity for lower level managers to influence top management's discretionary decisions. As a result, divisional managers may attempt to inflate the corporate perception of their relative contributions to the firm, or to take actions that make the elimination of their rents more costly for the firm. This incentive to influence is especially acute when managers fear losing their jobs, for example in the event of a divestiture. Since the firm's capital structure can affect future divestiture decisions, it can be chosen to reduce or increase the divisional managers' incentives to influence top management's decisions. The control of influence activities arises at the expense of restrictions on future divestiture decisions. Hence, there emerges an optimal capital structure that trades off the costs of influence activities against the costs of making poor divestiture decisions. The findings suggest that capital structure can also be chosen to control influence activities that arise under less extreme motivations. We identify several key factors that determine the optimal capital structure: the top management's prior assessment of the likelihood that it will be optimal to divest a specific division; the costs of influence activities to the firm and to the divisional managers; and the difference in the valuation of the division's assets in the current firm and under alternative uses.     

Factors Affecting Capital Structure Decisions

To gain insight into the factors affecting capital structure choice, responses from a Fortune 500 survey are analyzed using factor analysis and cluster analysis. Factor analysis uncovers nine factors explaining 66.7 percent of the variation in the responses. The factor loadings indicate that tax implications, management's desire for flexibility, and market concerns affect capital structure decisions. Perhaps as a result of the type of firms examined in the survey, little indication is provided on the importance of agency costs, signalling, or asymmetric information. Cluster analysis identified two distinct categories of firms. By looking at the mean responses to the survey questions of these two groups, additional insight is gained into the influences affecting capital structure decisions.     

The Theory of Capital Structure

This paper surveys capital structure theories based on agency costs, asymmetric information, product/input market interactions, and corporate control considerations (but excluding tax-based theories). For each type of model, a brief overview of the papers surveyed and their relation to each other is provided. The central papers are described in some detail, and their results are summarized and followed by a discussion of related extensions. Each section concludes with a summary of the main implications of the models surveyed in the section. Finally, these results are collected and compared to the available evidence. Suggestions for future research are provided.     

Market Timing and Capital Structure

It is well known that firms are more likely to issue equity when their market values are high, relative to book and past market values, and to repurchase equity when their market values are low. We document that the resulting effects on capital structure are very persistent. As a consequence, current capital structure is strongly related to historical market values. The results suggest the theory that capital structure is the cumulative outcome of past attempts to time the equity market.     

Capital Structure and Firm Efficiency

Abstract:  This paper investigates the relationship between firm efficiency and leverage. We consider both the effect of leverage on firm performance as well as the reverse causality relationship. In particular, we address the following questions: Does higher leverage lead to better firm performance? Does efficiency exert a significant effect on leverage over and above that of traditional financial measures of capital structure? Is the effect of efficiency on leverage similar across different capital structures? What is the signalling role of efficiency to creditors or investors? Using a sample of 12,240 New Zealand firms we find evidence supporting the theoretical predictions of the Jensen and Meckling (1976) agency cost model. Efficiency measured as the distance from the industry's 'best practice' production frontier is positively related to leverage over the entire range of observed data. The frontier is constructed using the non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method. Using quantile regression analysis we show that the reverse causality effect of efficiency on leverage is positive at low to mid-leverage levels and negative at high leverage ratios. Firm size also has a non-monotonic effect on leverage: negative at low debt ratios and positive at mid to high debt ratios. The effect of tangibles and profitability on leverage is positive while intangibles and other assets are negatively related to leverage.     

资本结构、产权结构与公司治理

资本结构也就是财产所有权的结构安排,而财产所有权往往最终与收益权对应,所以资本结构又牵系着产权安排,或者说资本结构决定了产权安排结构。这样作为股权资本与债券资本比例关系的资本结构,反映的是市场经济条件下企业的金融关系,即以资本和信用为纽带,通过投资与借贷构成的股东、债权人和经营者之间相互制约的利益关系。     

创业投资与产业投资组织结构比较研究

从组织结构来看，创业投资对传统的产业投资组织理论提出了挑战。理论研究主要集中在三个方面：委托代理理论、投融资理论与法人治理结构。从实证角度来看，传统产业投资与创业投资组织结构模式有不同的选择，这也决定了两者不同的绩效。比较国内创业投资与产业投资组织结构模式的不同选择。提出了一些建议。     

混合型资本工具与商业银行资本结构优化

资本管理是银行风险管理的核心内容,银行通过资本结构的合理安排,不仅能有效覆盖风险,满足资本监管要求,还能同时提高财务效率。本文结合混合型资本工具的特点及各国监管规定,分析了商业银行的最佳资本结构选择,并提出了我国商业银行的应对策略。     

民营企业资本结构与公司治理结构分析

民营企业的公司治理结构不健全主要是资金结构不合理、政府职能不到位以及企业自身原因所造成的.应推进金融体制改革,培育信用环境,提高风险识别能力,加强政府协调,改善民营企业的外部融资环境,优化资本结构,健全公司治理结构,解决民营企业融资难问题     

Property Segment and REIT Capital Structure

This paper relies on an increasing number of industry equilibrium studies linking a firm to its industry peers to help explain the observed REIT capital structure variation within property segments beyond what is possible with the traditional partial equilibrium trade-off and pecking order theories, which assume that each firm operates in isolation from other market participants and are not particularly suitable to REITs because of the regulated setting within which these firms operate. We build several proxies for a REIT’s position within its property segment. Consistent with the competitive equilibrium model of Maksimovic and Zechner (1991), we find that a REIT’s volatility of operating performance relative to the median volatility of operating performance of its segment peers is an important determinant of its leverage ratio. We also find that a REIT’s leverage ratio depends on the median leverage ratio in its segment. Leverage is also related to a REIT’s status as an incumbent and its role as a leader in the property segment.