本科毕业论文（设计）
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原文：
The Determinants of Capital Structure:Evidence from Chinese Listed
Companies
One early extension was to allow for the incidence of taxation and financial
distress. Since the late 1970s, there have been two new strands of research which
originate more from the theory of the firm: the „pecking order‟ theory and the
„trade-off‟ theory. The pecking order theory argues that firms have a preference of
issuing financing instruments due to adverse selection problems (Myers and Majluf,
1984). The theory suggests that the financial manager tends to use internal capital as
the first choice, then issue debt, and equity will only be considered as the last resort as
issuance of equity can be perceived by the market as a signal of a poor future for the
investment. In contrast, the trade-off theory emphasizes that an optimal capital
structure can be achieved by the trade-off of the various benefits of debt and equity.
2.1. The pecking order theory
The pecking order theory is based on the information asymmetries between the
firm‟s managers and the outside investors. Ross (1977) was the first to address the
function of debt as a signalling mechanism when there are information asymmetries
between the firm‟s management and its investors. He argued that management has
better knowledge of the firm than the investors, and that management will try to avoid
debt when the firm is performing poorly for fear that any debt default due to poor cash
flow will result in their job loss. The information asymmetry may also explain why
existing investors may not favor new equity financing, as new investors may require
higher returns to compensate for the risks of their investment thus diluting the returns
to existing investors. Myers and Majluf (1984) later developed their so-called pecking order theory of financing: i.e. that capital structure will be driven by firms‟ desire to
finance new investments preferably through the use of internal funds, then with
low-risk debt, and with new equity only as a last resort. In their theory, there is no
optimal capital structure that maximizes the firm value. The financial managers issue
debt or equity purely according to the costs of capital. Subsequent empirical studies
provide mixed evidence. Helwege and Liang (1996) found no empirical evidence for
such a pecking order. Booth et al. (2001) found evidence supporting the theory in their
10-country empirical study. Frank and Goyal (2003) tested the pecking order theory
on a broad cross-section of publicly traded American firms for 1971 to 1998, and
concluded that the theory was not supported by the evidence. Whilst large firms
exhibited some aspects of pecking order behavior, the evidence was not robust to the
inclusion of conventional leverage factors, nor to the analysis of evidence from the
1990s.
2.2. The trade-off theory
The trade-off theory argues that there is an optimal capital structure that
maximizes the firm value, but the trade-off comes in various forms.
2.2.1. TaxShield Benefits and the Financial Distress Cost of Debt
One of the crucial assumptions of the MM (1958) model was that there is no
taxation. Later work by Modigliani and Miller (1963), and Miller (1977) add tax
effects into the original framework. An implication of this newer work was that firms
should finance their projects completely through debt in order to maximize corporate
value. Clearly this contradicts reality in that debt constitutes only a fraction of firms‟
total capital. Subsequent theoretical work seeks an optimal capital structure which
results from a trade-off between the benefits of tax shield of debt and the costs of
financial distress of debt. According to this line of theory, the benefits of debt arise
from its tax exemption, which implies that a higher debt ratio will increase the firm‟s
value. But the benefits can be offset by costs of financial distress, which may destroy
the value of the firm. Thus the optimal capital structure is determined by the trade-off between the tax-free benefits of debt and the distress costs of debt - see Figure 1. De
Angelo and Masulis (1980), Ross (1985) and Leland (1994) have shown that, in the
presence of taxation, it is advantageous for a firm with safe, tangible assets and plenty
of taxable income to take a high debt-equity ratio to avoid high tax payments. For a
firm with poorer performance and more intangible assets, it is better to rely on equity
financing.
One problem with the theories based on consideration of the tax-shield benefits is
that they cannot explain why capital structures vary across firms that are subject to the
same taxation rates. Empirical evidence from the United States (Copeland and Weston,
1992) shows that the capital structure of corporations did not change much after
corporate income tax came into existence. In Australia, where there is no dual income
taxation at all, capital structure is roughly the same as in other economies (Rajan and
Zingales, 1995). Booth et al. (2001) found that the tax benefits vary in developing
countries and play no role in the determination of capital structure choice.
2.2.2. Agency Theory and Capital Structure
Even if markets are perfect and there is no tax impact, agency theory suggests
that the appropriate mix of debt and equity is still an important matter for corporate
governance. In general, debt claims provide the holders with a fixed repayment
schedule but little in the way of rights to control the company, as long as the
repayment schedule (and sometimes certain other terms) is met. However, creditors
can have a strong influence over a company if it gets in financial distress but, even if a
company is financially sound, creditors can influence whether it can obtain additional
funding for proposed new projects. For example, a bank that has loaned a company
the money for factory expansion can make it easy or hard for the company to borrow
more money for a new office building.
Conversely, equity claims – in particular, common stock – give shareholders the
right to vote for Boards of Directors and on other important corporate issues such as
major mergers or plans that would dispose of substantial portions of the company‟s
assets. Shareholders are also entitled to receive dividends or other distributions
