外文翻译--公司的股权结构、公司治理和资本结构决策——来自加纳的实证研究

金融体制、融资约束与投资——来自OECD的实证分析R．SemenovDepartment of Economics，University of Nijmegen，Nijmegen（荷兰内梅亨大学，经济学院）这篇论文考查了OECD的11个国家中现金流量对企业投资的影响.我们发现不同国家之间投资对企业内部可获取资金的敏感性具有显著差异,并且银企之间具有明显的紧密关系的国家的敏感性比银企之间具有公平关系的国家的低.同时，我们发现融资约束与整体金融发展指标不存在关系.我们的结论与资本市场信息和激励问题对企业投资具有重要作用这种观点一致，并且紧密的银企关系会减少这些问题从而增加企业获取外部融资的渠道。

一、引言各个国家的企业在显著不同的金融体制下运行。

金融发展水平的差别(例如，相对GDP的信用额度和相对GDP的相应股票市场的资本化程度），在所有者和管理者关系、企业和债权人的模式中，企业控制的市场活动水平可以很好地被记录.在完美资本市场,对于具有正的净现值投资机会的企业将一直获得资金。

然而，经济理论表明市场摩擦，诸如信息不对称和激励问题会使获得外部资本更加昂贵，并且具有盈利投资机会的企业不一定能够获取所需资本.这表明融资要素，例如内部产生资金数量、新债务和权益的可得性，共同决定了企业的投资决策.现今已经有大量考查外部资金可得性对投资决策的影响的实证资料（可参考，例如Fazzari（1998）、 Hoshi(1991)、 Chapman（1996）、Samuel(1998））.大多数研究结果表明金融变量例如现金流量有助于解释企业的投资水平。

这项研究结果解释表明企业投资受限于外部资金的可得性。

很多模型强调运行正常的金融中介和金融市场有助于改善信息不对称和交易成本，减缓不对称问题,从而促使储蓄资金投着长期和高回报的项目,并且提高资源的有效配置（参看Levine（1997)的评论文章）。

因而我们预期用于更加发达的金融体制的国家的企业将更容易获得外部融资.几位学者已经指出建立企业和金融中介机构可进一步缓解金融市场摩擦。

外文文献翻译译文一、外文原文原文：The influence of corporate governance on the relation betweencapital structure and valueCapital structure: relation with corporate value and main research streamsWhen looking at the most important theoretical contributions on the relation between capital structure and value, as illustrated in Figure 1, it becomes immediately evident that there is a substantial difference between the early theories and the more recent ones.Modigliani and Miller (1958), who had originally asserted that there was no relationship between capital structure and value ; in 1963, instead, reached the paradoxical and provocative conclusion that a maximum level of debt would mean a maximum level of firm value, due to the fact that interest is tax deductible . Many later contributions pointed out that this effect is compensated when considering personal taxes (Miller, 1977),an eventual lack of tax capacity, due to the presence of economic loss, the effect of other types of tax shields (De Angelo and Masulis, 1980), as well as the introduction of the costs(direct and indirect) of financial distress; all these situations end up creating a trade-off between debt costs and benefits. Point L’ in Figure 1c indicates an optimal level of debt,beyond which any rise in leverage would cause an increase in the benefits of debt that would be less than proportional with respect to the costs of financial distress. Furthermore, this non monotonic relation would be modified even more when considering agency costs as well as the costs of financial distress . Finally, one last stream of research (Myers, 1984,Myers 1984) points out managerial preferences when choosing financing resources . In this case no optimal level of debt becomes ‘‘objectively’’ evident,but this is due to the various situations the manager had to deal with over time. The function of managerialpreference has particular relevance due to information asymmetries, therefore the level of firm indebtedness will be determined by the tangent between the firm value function and the curve of manager indifference.Furthermore, it can be observed that debt increases in correspondence with the better the firm’s reputation is on the market (Chevalier, 1995). Research has shown similarities between firms that belong to the same sector (Titman and Wessels, 1988); in other words, capital structure tends to be industry-specific.The empirical comparison between the trade-off theory and the pecking order theory seems to be controversial. On one hand, empirical evidence shows moderate coherence with the trade-off theory, when revenue and agency problems are taken into consideration contextually; on the other hand, the negative relation between leverage and firm profit does not seem to support the trade-off theory, as it confirms a hierarchical order in financial decision making.It is, thus, clear that the topic of capital structure is anything but defined and that there are still many open problems regarding it.As many authors have noted (Rajan and Zingales, 1995) capital structure is a ‘‘hot’’ topic in finance. By analyzing international literature the main research priorities and new analytical approaches are related to:the important comparison between ‘‘rational’’ and ‘‘behavioural’’ finance (Barberis and Thaler, 2002);a lively comparison made between the pecking order theory and the trade-off theory(Shyam-Sunder and Myers, 1999);the attempt to apply these theories to small firms (Berger and Udell, 1998, Fluck, 2001);the role of corporate governance on the relation between capital structure and value(Heinrich, 2000, Bhagat and Jefferis, 2002, Brailsford et al., 2004, Mahrt-Smith, 2005).The behavioural approach, that considers the pecking order of financial resources in terms of ‘‘irrational’’ preferences, caused an immediate reactio n from Stewart Myers in 2000 and 2001 and jointly with Shyam-Sunder in 1999 (Myers, 2000; 2001; Shyam-Sunder and Myers,1999). Stewart Myers is the founder of the pecking order theory[7]. Problems of information asymmetry, together with transaction costs, would be able to offer a rational explanation to managerial behaviour when financial choicesare made following a hierarchical order (Fama and French, 2002). In other words, according to Myers and Fama, there should be a‘‘rational’’ explanation to the phenomenon observed by Stein, Baker, Wrugler, Barberis and Thaler.Moreover, studies on capital structure have also been done looking at small and medium size firms (Berger and Udell, 1998, Michaelas et al., 1999, Romano et al., 2000, Fluck, 2001),due to the relevant economic role of these firms (in Europe they are 95 percent of the total firms operating). Zingales (2000) as well has emphasized the fact that today ‘‘ . . . the attention shown towards large firms tends to partially obscure firms that do not have access to the financial markets . . . ’’. In one of the most interesting studies done on this topic, Berger and Udell (1998) asserted that firm financial behaviour depends on what phase of their life cycle they are in. In fact, there should be an optimal pro-tempore capital structure, related to the phase of the life cycle that the firm is in.Finally, the observations of Michael Jensen (1986), made throughout his many contributions on corporate governance, as well as those of Williamson (1988), have encouraged a line of research that, revitalized in the second part of the nineties, seems to be quite promising as a means to analyze how corporate governance directly or indirectly influences the relation between capital structure and value (Fluck, 1998, Zhang, 1998, Myers, 2000, De Jong, 2002,Berger and Patti, 2003, Brailsford et al., 2004, Mahrt-Smith, 2005). In synthesis, it is possible to affirm, as it follows, that a joined analysis of capital structure and corporate governance is necessary when describing and interpreting the firm’s ability to create value (Zingales, 2000, Heinrich, 2000, Bhagat and Jefferis, 2002). This type of consideration could help overcome the controversy found when studying the relation between capital structure and value, on both a theoretical and empirical level.Influence of corporate governance on the relation between capital structure and value.Capital structure can be analyzed by looking at the rights and attributes that characterize the firm’s assets and that influence, with d ifferent levels of intensity, governance activities. Equity and debt, therefore, must be considered as both financialinstruments and corporate governance instruments (Williamson, 1988): debt subordinates governance activities to stricter management, while equity allows for greater flexibility and decision making power. It can thus be inferred that when capital structure becomes an instrument of corporate governance, not only the mix between debt and equity and their well known consequences as far as taxes go must be taken into consideration. The way in which cash flow is allocated (cash flow right) and, even more importantly, how the right to make decisions and manage the firm (voting rights) is dealt with must also be examined. For example, venture capitalists are particularly sensitive to how capital structure and financing contracts are laid out, so that an optimal corporate governance can be guaranteed while incentives and checks for management behavior are well established (Zingales, 2000)[10].Coase (1991), in a sort of critique on his own work done in 1937, points out that it is important to pay more attention to the role of capital structure as an instrument that can mediate and moderate economical transactions within the firm and, consequently, between entrepreneurs and other stakeholders (corporate governance relations).As explicitly pointed out by Bhagat and Jefferis (2002), when they pay particular attention to the relations between cause and effect and to their interactions recently described on a theoretical level (Fluck, 1998, Zhang, 1998, Heinrich, 2000, Brailsford et al., 2004,Mahrt-Smith, 2005), a ‘‘research proposal’’ that future empirical studies should evaluate should be, how corporate governance can potentially have a relevant influence on the relation between capital structure and value, with an effect of mediation and/or moderation.The five relations identified in Figure 2 describe:the relation between capital structure and firm value (relation A) through a role of corporate governance ‘‘mediation’’ ; the relation between capital structure and firm value (relation A) through the role of capital governance ‘‘moderation’’ (relation D);the role of corporate governance as a determining factor in choices regarding capital structure (relation E).All five relations shown in Figure 2 are particularly interesting and show two threads of research that focus on the relations between:corporate governance andcapital structure, where the dimensions of the corporate governance determine firmfinancing choices, causing a possible relation of co-causation Whether management voluntarily chooses to use debt as a source of financing to reduce problems of information asymmetry and transaction, maximizing the efficiency of its firm governance decisions, or the increase in the debt level is forced by the stockholders as an instrument to discipline behavior and assure good corporate governance, capital structure is influenced by corporate governance (relation E) and vice versa (relation B).On one hand, a change in how debt and equity are dealt with influences firm governance activities by modifying the structure of incentives and managerial control. If, through the mix debt and equity, different categories of investors all converge within the firm, where they have different types of influence on governance decisions, then managers will tend to have preferences when determining how one of these categories will prevail when defining the firm’s capital structure. Even more importantly, through a specific design of debt contracts and equity it is possible to considerably increase firm governance efficiency.On the other hand, even corporate governance influences choices regarding capital structure (relation E). Myers (1984) and Myers and Majluf (1984) show how firmfinancing choices are made by management following an order of preference; in this case, if the manager chooses the financing resources it can be presumed that she is avoiding a reduction of her decision making power by accepting the discipline represented by debt.Internal resource financing allows management to prevent other subjects from intervening in their decision making processes. De Jong (2002) reveals how in the Netherlands managers try to avoid using debt so that their decision making power remains un checked. Zwiebel(1996) has observed that managers don’t voluntarily accept the ‘‘discipline’’ of debt; other governance mechanisms impose that debt is issued. Jensen (1986) noted that decisions to increase firm debt are voluntarily made by management when it intends to ‘‘reassure’’stakeholders that its governance decisions are ‘‘proper’’.In this light, firm financing decisions can be strictly deliberated bymanagers-entrepreneurs or else can be induced by specific situations that go beyond the will of the management.ConclusionThis paper define a theoretical approach that can contribute in clearing up the relation between capital structure, corporate governance and value, while they also promote a more precise design for empirical research. Capital structure represents one of many instruments that can preserve corporate governance efficiency and protect its ability to create value.Therefore, this thread of research affirms that if investment policies allow for value creation,financing policies, together with other governance instruments, can assure that investment policies are carried out efficiently while firm value is protected from opportunistic behavior.In other words, various authors (Borsch-Supan and Koke, 2000, Bhagat and Jefferis, 2002 and Berger and Patti, 2003) point out the necessity to analyze the relation between capital structure and value by always taking into consideration the interaction between corporate governance variables such as ownership concentration, management participation in the equity capital, the composition of the Board of Directors, etc.Furthermore, there is a problem in the way to operationalize these constructs, due to multidimensional nature of these. It is quite difficult to identify indicators that perfectly correspond to theoretical constructs; it means that proxy variables, or empirical measures of latent constructs, must be used (Corbetta, 1992).Moreover, it must be considered possible that there may be distortions in the signs and entities of the connections between variables due to endogeneity problems, or rather the presence of co-variation even when there is no cause, and reciprocal cause, where the distinction between the cause variable and the effect variable are lacking, and the two reciprocally influence each other.From an econometric point of view, therefore, it would seem to be important to further investigate the research proposal outlined above, by empirically examining the model proposed in Figure 2 using appropriate econometric techniques that can handle the complexity of the relations between the elements studied. Some proposals forstudy can be found in literature; the use of lagged variables is criticized by Borsch-Supan and Koke(2000) that affirm that it would be better to determine instrumental variables that influence only one of the two elements of study; Berger and Patti (2003), Borsch-Supan and Koke(2000) and Chen and Steiner (1999) promote the application of structural model equations to solve these problems, that is a method appropriate for examining the causal relations between latent, one-dimensional or multi-dimensional variables, measured with multiple indicators (Corbetta, 1992).In conclusion, this paper defines a theoretical model that contributes to clarifying the relations between capital structure, corporate governance and firm value, while promoting,as an aim for future research, a verification of the validity of this model through application of the analysis to a wide sample of firms and to single firms. To study the interaction between capital structure, corporate governance and value when analyzing a wide sample of firms,the researcher has to take into account the relations showed in Figure 2, look at problems of endogeneity and reciprocal causality, and make sure there is complementarity between all the three factors. Such an analysis deserves the application of refined econometric techniques. Moreover, these relations should be investigated in a cross-country analysis, to catch the role of country-specific factors.Source: Maurizio La Rocca,2007 “The influence of corporate governance on the relation between capital structure and value”. corporate gorernance,vol.7,no.3april,pp.312-325.二、翻译文章译文：公司治理对资本结构和企业价值关系的影响资本结构: 关系到公司价值及其主要研究趋向当查看关于描述资本结构与企业价值两者之间总体关系的最重要的理论文献时，会明显感觉到早期的理论与新近的理论有实质性的不同。

中国公司治理：现代视角Corporate governance in China: A modern perspective Corporate governance in China: A modern perspective☆Fuxiu Jiang, Kenneth A. Kim ⁎School of Business, Renmin University of China, 59 Zhongguancun Street, Haidian District, Beijing, China 100872近年来，许多使用中国金融数据的学术论文发表在领先的学术期刊上。

这一增长这并不奇怪，因为中国是一个转型经济大国，正在从计划经济转向市场经济，现在已经成为世界第二大经济体。

简单地说，中国是有趣和重要的。

然而，一些研究中国的缺点。

首先，考虑到大多数现代金融理论都起源于西方，尤其是美国，因此有很多研究中国的论文使用西方理论和概念来解释他们的实证发现。

2 . However, while it may sometimes be从西方的角度来看待中国的实证结果是恰当的，但在其他时候则不然。

其次，许多报纸似乎都是如此误解(或没有意识到)重要的监管问题;法律、金融和制度环境;和业务中国的风俗习惯。

第三，许多研究中国的论文，即使是最近发表的，现在已经过时了。

的中国过去20年的经济增长是爆炸式的。

在这段时间里，发生了许多变化地方，包括许多监管的变化和引入新的规则，影响公司治理在中国。

鉴于这些不足之处，本文的主要目的有两个:(一)对公司治理现状进行概述(二)指出和探讨公司治理在很大程度上是中国所特有的特点在本期特刊中，我们将为大家提供一个更新的中国公司治理观。

因此,我们也重要的是在适当的地方描述这些论文。

本文的其余部分如下。

在第二部分，我们提供了重要的制度背景资料的中国并讨论了中国公司治理的制度和监管环境。

在第三节,我们提供并讨论与公司治理相关的重要变量的汇总统计。

How Important is Financial Risk?IntroductionThe financial crisis of 2008 has brought significant attention to the effects of financial leverage. There is no doubt that the high levels of debt financing by financial institutions and households significantly contributed to the crisis. Indeed, evidence indicates that excessive leverage orchestrated by major global banks (e.g., through the mortgage lending and collateralized debt obligations) and the so-called “shadow banking system” may be the underlying cau se of the recent economic and financial dislocation. Less obvious is the role of financial leverage among nonfinancial firms. To date, problems in the U.S. non-financial sector have been minor compared to the distress in the financial sector despite the seizing of capital markets during the crisis. For example, non-financial bankruptcies have been limited given that the economic decline is the largest since the great depression of the 1930s. In fact, bankruptcy filings of non-financial firms have occurred mostly in U.S. industries (e.g., automotive manufacturing, newspapers, and real estate) that faced fundamental economic pressures prior to the financial crisis. This surprising fact begs the question, “How important is financial risk for non-financial firms?” At the heart of this issue is the uncertainty about the determinants of total firm risk as well as components of firm risk.StudyRecent academic research in both asset pricing and corporate finance has rekindled an interest in analyzing equity price risk. A current strand of the asset pricing literature examines the finding of Campbell et al. (2001) that firm-specific (idiosyncratic) risk has tended to increase over the last 40 years. Other work suggests that idiosyncratic risk may be a priced risk factor (see Goyal and Santa-Clara, 2003, among others). Also related to these studies is work by Pástor and Veronesi (2003) showing how investor uncertainty about firm profitability is an important determinant of idiosyncratic risk and firm value. Other research has examined the role of equity volatility in bond pricing (e.g., Dichev, 1998, Campbell, Hilscher, and Szilagyi, 2008).However, much of the empirical work examining equity price risk takes the risk of assets as given or tries to explain the trend in idiosyncratic risk. In contrast, thispaper takes a different tack in the investigation of equity price risk. First, we seek to understand the determinants of equity price risk at the firm level by considering total risk as the product of risks inherent in the firms operations (i.e., economic or business risks) and risks associated with financing the firms operations (i.e., financial risks). Second, we attempt to assess the relative importance of economic and financial risks and the implications for financial policy.Early research by Modigliani and Miller (1958) suggests that financial policy may be largely irrelevant for firm value because investors can replicate many financial decisions by the firm at a low cost (i.e., via homemade leverage) and well-functioning capital markets should be able to distinguish between financial and economic distress. Nonetheless, financial policies, such as adding debt to the capital structure, can magnify the risk of equity. In contrast, recent research on corporate risk management suggests that firms may also be able to reduce risks and increase value with financial policies such as hedging with financial derivatives. However, this research is often motivated by substantial deadweight costs associated with financial distress or other market imperfections associated with financial leverage. Empirical research provides conflicting accounts of how costly financial distress can be for a typical publicly traded firm.We attempt to directly address the roles of economic and financial risk by examining determinants of total firm risk. In our analysis we utilize a large sample of non-financial firms in the United States. Our goal of identifying the most important determinants of equity price risk (volatility) relies on viewing financial policy as transforming asset volatility into equity volatility via financial leverage. Thus, throughout the paper, we consider financial leverage as the wedge between asset volatility and equity volatility. For example, in a static setting, debt provides financial leverage that magnifies operating cash flow volatility. Because financial policy is determined by owners (and managers), we are careful to examine the effects of firms’ asset and operating characteristics on financial policy. Specifically, we examine a variety of characteristics suggested by previous research and, as clearly as possible, distinguish between those associated with the operations of the company (i.e. factors determining economic risk) and those associated with financing the firm (i.e. factors determining financial risk). We then allow economic risk to be a determinant of financial policy in the structural framework of Leland and Toft (1996), or alternatively,in a reduced form model of financial leverage. An advantage of the structural model approach is that we are able to account for both the possibility of financial and operating implications of some factors (e.g., dividends), as well as the endogenous nature of the bankruptcy decision and financial policy in general.Our proxy for firm risk is the volatility of common stock returns derived from calculating the standard deviation of daily equity returns. Our proxies for economic risk are designed to capture the essential characteristics of the firms’ operations and assets that determine the cash flow generating process for the firm. For example, firm size and age provide measures of line of- business maturity; tangible assets (plant, property, and equipment) serve as a proxy for the ‘hardness’ of a firm’s assets; capital expenditures measure capital intensity as well as growth potential. Operating profitability and operating profit volatility serve as measures of the timeliness and riskiness of cash flows. To understand how financial factors affect firm risk, we examine total debt, debt maturity, dividend payouts, and holdings of cash and short-term investments.The primary result of our analysis is surprising: factors determining economic risk for a typical company explain the vast majority of the variation in equity volatility. Correspondingly, measures of implied financial leverage are much lower than observed debt ratios. Specifically, in our sample covering 1964-2008 average actual net financial (market) leverage is about 1.50 compared to our estimates of between 1.03 and 1.11 (depending on model specification and estimation technique). This suggests that firms may undertake other financial policies to manage financial risk and thus lower effective leverage to nearly negligible levels. These policies might include dynamically adjusting financial variables such as debt levels, debt maturity, or cash holdings (see, for example, Acharya, Almeida, and Campello, 2007). In addition, many firms also utilize explicit financial risk management techniques such as the use of financial derivatives, contractual arrangements with investors (e.g. lines of credit, call provisions in debt contracts, or contingencies in supplier contracts), special purpose vehicles (SPVs), or other alternative risk transfer techniques.The effects of our economic risk factors on equity volatility are generally highly statistically significant, with predicted signs. In addition, the magnitudes of the effects are substantial. We find that volatility of equity decreases with the size and age of the firm. This is intuitive since large and mature firms typically have more stable lines ofbusiness, which should be reflected in the volatility of equity returns. Equity volatility tends to decrease with capital expenditures though the effect is weak. Consistent with the predictions of Pástor and Veronesi (2003), we find that firms with higher profitability and lower profit volatility have lower equity volatility. This suggests that companies with higher and more stable operating cash flows are less likely to go bankrupt, and therefore are potentially less risky. Among economic risk variables, the effects of firm size, profit volatility, and dividend policy on equity volatility stand out. Unlike some previous studies, our careful treatment of the endogeneity of financial policy confirms that leverage increases total firm risk. Otherwise, financial risk factors are not reliably related to total risk.Given the large literature on financial policy, it is no surprise that financial variables are,at least in part, determined by the economic risks firms take. However, some of the specific findings are unexpected. For example, in a simple model of capital structure, dividend payouts should increase financial leverage since they represent an outflow of cash from the firm (i.e., increase net debt). We find that dividends are associated with lower risk. This suggests that paying dividends is not as much a product of financial policy as a characteristic of a firm’s operations(e.g., a mature company with limited growth opportunities). We also estimate how sensitivities to different risk factors have changed over time. Our results indicate that most relations are fairly stable. One exception is firm age which prior to 1983 tends to be positively related to risk and has since been consistently negatively related to risk. This is related to findings by Brown and Kapadia (2007) that recent trends in idiosyncratic risk are related to stock listings by younger and riskier firms.Perhaps the most interesting result from our analysis is that our measures of implied financial leverage have declined over the last 30 years at the same time that measures of equity price risk (such as idiosyncratic risk) appear to have been increasing. In fact, measures of implied financial leverage from our structural model settle near 1.0 (i.e., no leverage) by the end of our sample. There are several possible reasons for this. First, total debt ratios for non-financial firms have declined steadily over the last 30 years, so our measure of implied leverage should also decline. Second, firms have significantly increased cash holdings, so measures of net debt (debt minus cash and short-term investments) have also declined. Third, the composition of publicly traded firms has changed with more risky (especially technology-oriented)firms becoming publicly listed. These firms tend to have less debt in their capital structure. Fourth, as mentioned above, firms can undertake a variety of financial risk management activities. To the extent that these activities have increased over the last few decades, firms will have become less exposed to financial risk factors.We conduct some additional tests to provide a reality check of our results. First, we repeat our analysis with a reduced form model that imposes minimum structural rigidity on our estimation and find very similar results. This indicates that our results are unlikely to be driven by model misspecification. We also compare our results with trends in aggregate debt levels for all U.S. non-financial firms and find evidence consistent with our conclusions. Finally, we look at characteristics of publicly traded non-financial firms that file for bankruptcy around the last three recessions and find evidence suggesting that these firms are increasingly being affected by economic distress as opposed to financial distress.ConclusionIn short, our results suggest that, as a practical matter, residual financial risk is now relatively unimportant for the typical U.S. firm. This raises questions about the level of expected financial distress costs since the probability of financial distress is likely to be lower than commonly thought for most companies. For example, our results suggest that estimates of the level of systematic risk in bond pricing may be biased if they do not take into account the trend in implied financial leverage (e.g., Dichev, 1998). Our results also bring into question the appropriateness of financial models used to estimate default probabilities, since financial policies that may be difficult to observe appear to significantly reduce risk. Lastly, our results imply that the fundamental risks born by shareholders are primarily related to underlying economic risks which should lead to a relatively efficient allocation of capital.Some readers may be tempted to interpret our results as indicating that financial risk does not matter. This is not the proper interpretation. Instead, our results suggest that firms are able to manage financial risk so that the resulting exposure to shareholders is low compared to economic risks. Of course, financial risk is important to firms that choose to take on such risks either through high debt levels or a lack of risk management. In contrast, our study suggests that the typical non-financial firm chooses not to take these risks. In short, gross financial risk may be important, but firms can manage it. This contrasts with fundamental economic and business risks thatare more difficult (or undesirable) to hedge because they represent the mechanism by which the firm earns economic profits.References[1]Shyam,Sunder.Theory Accounting and Control[J].An Innternational Theory on PublishingComPany.2005[2]Ogryezak,W,Ruszeznski,A. Rom Stomchastic Dominance to Mean-Risk Models:Semide-Viations as Risk Measures[J].European Journal of Operational Research.[3] Borowski, D.M., and P.J. Elmer. An Expert System Approach to Financial Analysis: the Case of S&L Bankruptcy [J].Financial Management, Autumn.2004;[4] Casey, C.and N. Bartczak. Using Operating Cash Flow Data to Predict Financial Distress: Some Extensions[J]. Journal of Accounting Research,Spring.2005;[5] John M.Mulvey,HafizeGErkan.Applying CVaR for decentralized risk management of financialcompanies[J].Journal of Banking&Finanee.2006;[6] Altman. Credit Rating:Methodologies,Rationale and Default Risk[M]．Risk Books,London.译文：财务风险的重要性引言2008年的金融危机对金融杠杆的作用产生重大影响。

中文4490字本科毕业论文（设计）外文翻译外文题目Corporate Social Responsibility, OwnershipStructure,and Political Interference: Evidence from China 外文出处《Journal of Business Ethics》2010（96）：P631-645 外文作者Wenjing Li Ran Zhang原文：Corporate Social Responsibility, Ownership Structure, and Political Interference: Evidence from China IntroductionIn recent years, there has been growing awareness of the role of corporations in society in an international setting. Among the unresolved issues that deserve attention, Aguilera et al. (2007, p. 837) postulate that an important question in corporate social responsibility (CSR) requiring further attention is ‘‘what catalyzes organizations to engage in increasingly robust CSR initiatives.’’ Prior research studies (Chapple and Moon, 2005; Deniz-Deniz and Garcia-Falcon, 2002; Graves and Waddock, 1994; Johnson and Greening, 1999; Muller and Kolk, 2010; Roberts, 1992; Stanwick and Stanwick, 1998; Zu and Song, 2009) document a link among CSR and firm size, profitability, corporate governance, leverage, employees, industry, and environmental pressures, e.g., shareholder demands, regulation, or media pressure. Among those studies, Graves and Waddock (1994) and Johnson and Greening (1999) document a relationship between firm ownership structure and CSR. Keim (1978), Ullmann (1985), and Roberts (1992) all document a positive relationship between dispersed corporate ownership and CSR disclosure in the context of developed countries. Given the difference in people’s ethical reasoning and decisions between developed andemerging countries (Ge and Thomas, 2007; Lam and Shi, 2008; Whitcomb et al., 1998), does ownership structure also affect CSR in emerging markets such as China? Do the factors that have been previously documented to drive CSR in Anglo-American countries (the USA and the UK) also determine CSR in emerging markets? In order to answer those questions, our study focuses on examining how a firm’s ownership structure and political interference affect CSR in the largest emerging market, namely, China.Using Shanghai National Accounting Institute’s (SNAI) Chinese firms’ social responsibility ranking, we show that for non-state-owned firms, corporate ownership dispersion is positively associated to CSR. However, for state-owned firms, this relation is reversed. We attribute the reversed relationship to political interferences and further test this hypothesis by demonstrating that regional economic development is negatively related to CSR for state-owned firms due to decreased political interference in more developed areas. The results also reveal that firm’s size, profitability, employee power, leverage, and growth opportunity affect CSRs in China.This study contributes to the literature in several ways. First, this study directly examined the relationship between ownership structure and CSR in emerging markets, and our results depict that it is important to consider ownership type in assessing CSR in emerging market where state ownership is still prevalent, such as in China. Second, the high extent of retained government ownership in China allows us to investigate the link between CSR and ownership type using a unique data set provided by SNAI Chinese firms’ social responsibility ranking. Our findings on the relationship between firm ownership type and CSR have implications in other countries where state-ownership is still prevalent, such as Singapore, Malaysia, Austria, and Finland (Claessens et al., 2000; Faccio and Lang, 2002). Third, we provide evidence of associations between CSR and firm’s size, profitability, corporate governance, environmental pressures, and leverage. These findings are consistent with those of prior research, which are mostly documented in the developed-country context, suggesting that CSR activities are largely driven by strategic motivations and are constricted by economic considerations. Finally, while the issue of CSR has attractedgrowing research interest in recent years, most empirical results are based on the US data and this article is the first empirical CSR research examining drivers of CSR in emerging markets to use a large research sample. In both Amato and Amato (2007) and Muller and Whiteman (2009), the corresponding authors advocate non-US-based studies of CSR to examine the effect of cultural, economic, legal, and ethical differences in corporate social performance. This article adds to a growing number of non-US studies by investigating the link between firm’s characteristics and CSR in China, the largest emerging market in the world.The remainder of this study is organized as follows: The next section shows the relevant literature and identifies our research questions. The third section provides an institutional background and develops hypotheses. The fourth section discusses data gathering and methodology. The fifth section presents results, and the last section concludes, suggesting implications of the study.Literature reviewPrior research on CSR mainly focuses on conceptualizing as well as empirically assessing its impact on business performance. A number of studies have been conducted in an attempt to link CSR with financial performance (i.e., Abratt and Sacks, 1988; Aupperle et al., 1985; Russo and Fouts, 1997; Waddock and Graves, 1997). In addition to corporate performance, recent studies also examined the impact of CSR on other stakeholders of the companies. For example, Mohr et al. (2001) observe the impact of CSR on the customer buying behavior, while Turban and Greening (1997) examine the impact of CSR on the organizational attractiveness to employees.Compared with the growing body of literature on the nature and consequences of CSR, however, the issue of how to improve the companies’ level of CSR, o r what factors determine CSR level, has received relatively limited attention, especially in the emerging market setting. Jones (1999) establishes that an institutional framework for the determinants of CSR, suggesting that institutional structure, such as sociocultural, national economy, industry, firm, and individual, mainly determinesCSR. Following the logic of Jones (1999), a numbers of studies document several factors affecting the level of CSR based on the context of developed countries. For example, Stanwick and Stanwick (1998) find evidence of a positive relationship between corporate social performance (CSP) and organization size, financial performance, and environmental performance. Johnson and Greening (1999) examine the effects of corporate governance and institutional ownership type on CSP, which indicates that ownership structure is correlated to CSP.Although several studies have shed light on the determinants of CSR in developed countries, research on this area is still quite limited in developing countries. Only a few recent articles have addressed this area, and none of them examines the ownership structure–CSR relationship directly in developing countries. Analyzing website reporting of 50 companies in seven Asian countries, Chapple and Moon (2005) conclude that variation of CSR is explained by factors in the respective national business systems. Muller and Kolk (2010), using survey data from 121 auto parts suppliers in Mexico, find that management’s commitment to ethics is a dominant driver o f CSP, and management’s commitment to ethics interacts positively with trade-related pressures to raise CSP levels. Based on a survey method and a small sample, Zu and Song (2009) document that firms smaller in size, state-owned, producing traditional goods, and located in poorer regions are more likely to have managers who opt for a higher CSR rating in China.The studies related with emerging markets may be inconclusive given the small sample size. Considering the validity and reliability of the conclusion, the multivariate analysis of a large sample may describe a clear picture of determinants of CSR in emerging markets. According to the argument of Jones (1999) and the general framework for environmental constraint drivers of CSR provided by See (2009), the previous studies only examine one or several aspects of the driving factors of CSR, and are with high chances of missing important control variables affecting levels of CSR. Therefore, the multivariate regression in our study perceives the inclusion of a comprehensive set of control variables from not only existing evidences in prior studies, but also theoretical analysis on the determinants of CSR (Jones, 1999; See,2009). Using the sample of manufacturing firms in China, we extend the existing research by examining the effect of ownership structure and economic development, as well as political interference, on the level of CSR according to the theoretical framework on harmonious society and Chinese CSR (See, 2009) after controlling for a variety of variables which have been documented as influencing factors of CSR.Background and hypotheses developmentInstitutional backgroundChinese public listed companies (PLCs) differ from their counterparts in other countries in the relatively large government stake and the associated, generally more concentrated, shareholding structure (Tian and Estrin, 2008).Table1 compares the percentage of firms with the state as ultimate controller in China versus other countries. Consistent with prior research (Bennett et al., 2005), we observe that the gover nment as owner plays a role in Chinese listed firms quite out of line with that observed in other markets or transition economies. In 1481 Chinese public listed companies with available financial and ownership data, 63.15% have the state as ultimate controller, comparing with the highest 23.50% in Singapore and the lowest 0.08% in the U.S., amongst all other countries. The very high extent of retained government ownership of Chinese listed firms suggests that political interference becomes an important institu tional characteristic of China’s capital market which offers us a great opportunity to investigate the relationship between firm ownership type, ownership structure, and CSR.Compared with western companies, Chinese enterprises face more severe agency problems that arise between controlling and non-controlling shareholders (Type II agency problem) because of controlling shareholders’ significant stock ownership and control over the firms’ board of directors (Jiang et al., 2010; Johnson et al., 2000). Shleifer and Vishny (1997) point out, ‘‘large investors may represent their own interests, which need not coincide with the interests of other investors in the firm, or with the interests of employees and managers.’’ In order to exploit their own interests, controlling shareholders have clear incentives to divert corporate wealth by tunnelingthrough inter-corporate loans (Jiang et al., 2010).Type II agency problem diverts corporate wealth from related firms, and it has a negative effect on corporate business behavior, especially performance. The literature also documents such empirical evidences. Some economists usually view that political interference, the type II agency problem for state-owned enterprises (SOEs), is usually at the expense of corporate profitabilit y (Boycko et al., 1996). Frye and Shleifer (1997) show that private ownership is preferable to state ownership because the government has a ‘‘grabbing hand’’ that extorts firms for the benefit of politicians and bureaucrats. Acemoglu and Johnson (2005) provide cross-country evidence that countries with weaker property rights and limited protection against expropriation by politicians and the country’s elite have substantially lower income per capita and investment rates, and less-developed stock markets. Similar conclusions are drawn in China. Fan et al. (2007) document that the accounting and stock return performance of the firms run by politically connected CEOs is poor relative to their politically unconnected counterparts. Dougherty and McGuckin (2008) propose that decentralized administration has been a key factor in determining business productivity in China. In general, government intervention is shown to be detrimental to corporate performance as a result of diverting corporate wealth for political purposes.Hypotheses developmentPrevious literature indirectly supports the argument that when firm’s ownership gets more dispersed, the CSR level gets higher (Keim, 1978; Ullmann, 1985). Keim (1978) stated that as the distribution of ownership of a corporatio n becomes less concentrated, the demands placed on the corporation by share owners become broader. Dispersed corporate ownership, especially by investors concerned with corporate social activities (e.g., social responsibility mutual funds, church, and civic pension plans, and ethical investors), heightens pressure for management to disclose social responsibility activities (Ullmann, 1985). Some studies show CSP is positively related to the number of institutions holding the shares of a company (Graves and Waddock, 1994) and pension fund equity (Johnson and Greening, 1999).Consistent with the western counterparts, the shareholders of Chinese non-state-owned firms should have the same relationship between ownership dispersion and CSR. According to the theory of type II agency problem, the largest shareholder of non-state-owned firms expropriates minority shareholders to achieve its own interest, which impairs other stakeholders’ interest and declines CSR. Therefore, well-protected minority shareholders are associated with higher levels of CSR engagement (Johnson and Greening, 1999; See, 2009). Corporate ownership dispersion lessens the extent of type II agency problem. The less the ownership dispersion, the more the control of largest shareholder over company to divert corporate wealth. Taken together, corporate ownership dispersion is negatively related to levels of CSR for Chinese non-state-owned firms.With much higher impact of political interference on company behaviors, we expect the relationship between ownership dispersion and CSR to be negative for state-owned firms. Higher levels of perceived governmental influence on corporate activity would be expected to lead to a greater effort by management to meet expectations of government. The government, largest shareholder of SOEs, has incentives to divert wealth to obtain social stability (Bai et al., 2006), which helps to improve CSR. High levels of government ownership create incentives for CEOs to achieve non-financial objectives related to government policy,such as infrastructure development and resolution of the region’s fiscal and unemployment challenges, and hence, these social or political objectives exert pressure on firms to pursue CSR (See, 2009). Roberts (1992) documents that political interference positively impact social responsibility disclosures. In the example provided by Tian and Estrin (2008), the Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Company Limited, which has the government as majority shareholder, employed 38,000 people for its core operation in 1998. When it tried to lay off 17,000 employees, its government shareholder prevented it, instead forcing it to find alternative employment. Although this kind of behavior may harm corporate wealth, it satisfies the government shareholder’s political interests and co mmitted a high level of CSR. Accordingly, we propose our first hypothesis as follows:H1a: For SOEs, as the state is the largest shareholder, the corporate ownership dispersion is positively related to the level of CSR.H1b: For non-state-owned firms, corp orate ownership dispersion is negatively related to the level of CSR.Source:Wenjing Li，Ran Zhang.Corporate Social Responsibility，Ownership Structure，and Political Interference：Evidence from China [J].《Journal of Business Ethics》.2010（96）：P631-645.译文：企业社会责任，股权结构和政治干预：来自中国的证据引言近年来在国际环境中，企业在社会中所扮演的角色得到了人们越来越多的认知。

公司治理外文书籍
以下是一些关于公司治理的外文书籍推荐：
《公司治理》(Corporate Governance) - 国立政治大学财务管理研究所教授郑志弘著，详细介绍了公司治理的理论框架、机制和实务，适合初学者。

《Corporation Governance: Principles, Policies, and Practices》- R. I. Tricker著，研究公司治理的经典著作，综合了理论和实践，并涵盖了全球
范围内的案例研究。

《Good to Great by Jim Collins》- 通过分析包括可口可乐、英特尔、通
用电气等在内的著名公司，讨论他们是如何保持长期的发展，这对中国公司建立百年老店的目标应该很有启发。

《First, break all the rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman》- 通过大量的调查和分析，讲述优秀的经理人是如何鼓励员工实现潜能的，
而不是通过简单的金钱和福利手段，对于真正理解美国公司的管理和文化很有实战意义。

《Strength Finder by Tom Rath》- 讲述如何找到和充分发挥个人的长处，跟传统文化的一些提高自己的短处的思路有很大的不同。

此外，还有《董事会运作手册》、《公司治理：中国学习与实践》等书籍，这些书籍都是关于公司治理的经典之作，对于深入了解公司治理的原理和实践非常有帮助。

中文3150字，2100单词，10800英文字符出处：Abor J. The effect of capital structure on profitability: an empirical analysis of listed firms in Ghana[J]. Journal of Risk Finance, 2005, 6(November):438-445.外文翻译The effect of capital structure on profitability : an empirical analysis of listed firms in GhanaAuthor:Joshua AborIntroductionThe capital structure decision is crucial for any business organization. The decision is important because of the need to maximize returns to various organizational constituencies, and also because of the impact such a decision has on a firm’s ability to deal with its competitive environment. The capital structure of a firm is actually a mix of different securities. In general, a firm can choose among many alternative capital structures. It can issue a large amount of debt or very little debt. It can arrange lease financing, use warrants, issue convertible bonds, sign forward contracts or trade bond swaps. It can issue dozens of distinct securities in countless combinations; however, it attempts to find the particular combination that maximizes its overall market value.A number of theories have been advanced in explaining the capital structure of firms. Despite the theoretical appeal of capital structure, researchers in financial management have not found the optimal capital structure. The best that academics and practitioners have been able to achieve are prescriptions that satisfy short-term goals. For example, the lack of a consensus about what would qualify as optimal capital structure has necessitated the need for this research. A better understanding of the issues at hand requires a look at the concept of capital structure and its effect on firm profitability. This paper examines the relationship between capital structure and profitability of companies listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange during the period 1998-2002. The effect of capital structure on the profitability of listed firms in Ghana is a scientific area that has not yet been explored in Ghanaian finance literature.The paper is organized as follows. The following section gives a review of the extant literature on the subject. The next section describes the data and justifies the choice of the variables used in the analysis. The model used in the analysis is then estimated. The subsequent section presents and discusses the results of the empirical analysis. Finally, the last section summarizes the findings of the research and also concludes the discussion.Literature on capital structureThe relationship between capital structure and firm value has been the subject of considerable debate. Throughout the literature, debate has centered on whether there is an optimal capital structure for an individual firm or whether the proportion of debt usage is irrelevant to the individual firm’s value. The capital structure of a firm concerns the mix of debt and equity the firm uses in its operation. Brealey and Myers (2003) contend that the choice of capital structure is fundamentally a marketing problem. They state that the firm can issue dozens of distinct securities in countless combinations, but it attempts to find the particular combination that maximizes market value. According to Weston and Brigham (1992), the optimal capital structure is the one that maximizes the market value of the firm’s outstanding shares.Fama and French (1998), analyzing the relationship among taxes, financing decisions, and the firm’s value, concluded that the debt does not concede tax benefits. Besides, the high leverage degree generates agency problems among shareholders and creditors that predict negative relationships between leverage and profitability. Therefore, negative information relating debt and profitability obscures the tax benefit of the debt. Booth et al. (2001) developed a study attempting to relate the capital structure of several companies in countries with extremely different financial markets. They concluded that the variables that affect the choice of the capital structure of the companies are similar, in spite of the great differences presented by the financial markets. Besides, they concluded that profitability has an inverse relationship with debt level and size of the firm. Graham (2000) concluded in his work that big and profitable companies present a low debt rate. Mesquita and Lara (2003) found in their study that the relationship between rates of return and debt indicates a negative relationship for long-term financing. However, they found a positiverelationship for short-term financing and equity.Hadlock and James (2002) concluded that companies prefer loan (debt) financing because they anticipate a higher return. Taub (1975) also found significant positive coefficients for four measures of profitability in a regression of these measures against debt ratio. Petersen and Rajan (1994) identified the same association, but for industries. Baker (1973), who worked with a simultaneous equations model, and Nerlove (1968) also found the same type of association for industries. Roden and Lewellen (1995) found a significant positive association between profitability and total debt as a percentage of the total buyout-financing package in their study on leveraged buyouts. Champion (1999) suggested that the use of leverage was one way to improve the performance of an organization.In summary, there is no universal theory of the debt-equity choice. Different views have been put forward regarding the financing choice. The present study investigates the effect of capital structure on profitability of listed firms on the GSE.MethodologyThis study sampled all firms that have been listed on the GSE over a five-year period (1998-2002). Twenty-two firms qualified to be included in the study sample. Variables used for the analysis include profitability and leverage ratios. Profitability is operationalized using a commonly used accounting-based measure: the ratio of earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) to equity. The leverage ratios used include:. short-term debt to the total capital;. long-term debt to total capital;. total debt to total capital.Firm size and sales growth are also included as control variables.The panel character of the data allows for the use of panel data methodology. Panel data involves the pooling of observations on a cross-section of units over several time periods and provides results that are simply not detectable in pure cross-sections or pure time-series studies.A general model for panel data that allows the researcher to estimate panel data with great flexibility and formulate the differences in the behavior of the cross-section elements is adopted. The relationship between debt and profitability is thus estimated in the following regression models:ROE i,t =β0 +β1SDA i,t +β2SIZE i,t +β3SG i,t + ëi,t (1)ROE i,t=β0 +β1LDA i,t +β2SIZE i,t +β3SG i,t + ëi,t (2)ROE i,t=β0 +β1DA i,t +β2SIZE i,t +β3SG i,t + ëi,t (3)where:. ROE i,t is EBIT divided by equity for firm i in time t;. SDA i,t is short-term debt divided by the total capital for firm i in time t;. LDA i,t is long-term debt divided by the total capital for firm i in time t;. DA i,t is total debt divided by the total capital for firm i in time t;. SIZEi ,tis the log of sales for firm i in time t;. SGi ,tis sales growth for firm i in time t; and. ëi ,tis the error term.Empirical resultsTable I provides a summary of the descriptive statistics of the dependent and independent variables for the sample of firms. This shows the average indicators of variables computed from the financial statements. The return rate measured by return on equity (ROE) reveals an average of 36.94 percent with median 28.4 percent. This picture suggests a good performance during the period under study. The ROE measures the contribution of net income per cedi (local currency) i nvested by the firms’ stockholders; a measure of the efficiency of the owners’ invested capital. The variable SDA measures the ratio of short-term debt to total capital. The average value of this variable is 0.4876 with median 0.4547. The value 0.4547 indicates that approximately 45 percent of total assets are represented by short-term debts, attesting to the fact that Ghanaian firms largely depend on short-term debt for financing their operations due to the difficulty in accessing long-term credit from financial institutions. Another reason is due to the under-developed nature of the Ghanaian long-term debt market. The ratio of total long-term debt to total assets (LDA) also stands on average at 0.0985. Total debt to total capital ratio(DA) presents a mean of 0.5861. This suggests that about 58 percent of total assets are financed by debt capital.The above position reveals that the companies are financially leveraged with a large percentage of total debt being short-term.Table I.Descriptive statisticsMean SD Minimum Median Maximum ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ROE 0.3694 0.5186 -1.0433 0.2836 3.8300SDA 0.4876 0.2296 0.0934 0.4547 1.1018LDA 0.0985 0.1803 0.0000 0.0186 0.7665DA 0.5861 0.2032 0.2054 0.5571 1.1018SIZE 18.2124 1.6495 14.1875 18.2361 22.0995SG 0.3288 0.3457 20.7500 0.2561 1.3597━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Regression analysis is used to investigate the relationship between capital structure and profitability measured by ROE. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression results are presented in Table II. The results from the regression models (1), (2), and (3) denote that the independent variables explain the debt ratio determinations of the firms at 68.3, 39.7, and 86.4 percent, respectively. The F-statistics prove the validity of the estimated models. Also, the coefficients are statistically significant in level of confidence of 99 percent.The results in regression (1) reveal a significantly positive relationship between SDA and profitability. This suggests that short-term debt tends to be less expensive, and therefore increasing short-term debt with a relatively low interest rate will lead to an increase in profit levels. The results also show that profitability increases with the control variables (size and sales growth). Regression (2) shows a significantly negative association between LDA and profitability. This implies that an increase in the long-term debt position is associated with a decrease in profitability. This is explained by the fact that long-term debts arerelatively more expensive, and therefore employing high proportions of them could lead to low profitability. The results support earlier findings by Miller (1977), Fama and French (1998), Graham (2000) and Booth et al. (2001). Firm size and sales growth are again positively related to profitability.The results from regression (3) indicate a significantly positive association between DA and profitability. The significantly positive regression coefficient for total debt implies that an increase in the debt position is associated with an increase in profitability: thus, the higher the debt, the higher the profitability. Again, this suggests that profitable firms depend more on debt as their main financing option. This supports the findings of Hadlock and James (2002), Petersen and Rajan (1994) and Roden and Lewellen (1995) that profitable firms use more debt. In the Ghanaian case, a high proportion (85 percent) of debt is represented by short-term debt. The results also show positive relationships between the control variables (firm size and sale growth) and profitability.Table II.Regression model results━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Profitability (EBIT/equity)Ordinary least squares━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Variable 1 2 3SIZE 0.0038 (0.0000) 0.0500 (0.0000) 0.0411 (0.0000)SG 0.1314 (0.0000) 0.1316 (0.0000) 0.1413 (0.0000)SDA 0.8025 (0.0000)LDA -0.3722(0.0000)DA -0.7609(0.0000)R² 0.6825 0.3968 0.8639SE 0.4365 0.4961 0.4735Prob. (F) 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ConclusionsThe capital structure decision is crucial for any business organization. The decision is important because of the need to maximize returns to various organizational constituencies, and also because of the impact such a decision has on an organization’s ability to deal with its competitive environment. This present study evaluated the relationship between capital structure and profitability of listed firms on the GSE during a five-year period (1998-2002). The results revealed significantly positive relation between SDA and ROE, suggesting that profitable firms use more short-term debt to finance their operation. Short-term debt is an important component or source of financing for Ghanaian firms, representing 85 percent of total debt financing. However, the results showed a negative relationship between LDA and ROE. With regard to the relationship between total debt and profitability, the regression results showed a significantly positive association between DA and ROE. This suggests that profitable firms depend more on debt as their main financing option. In the Ghanaian case, a high proportion (85 percent) of the debt is represented in short-term debt.译文加纳上市公司资本结构对盈利能力的实证研究作者：乔舒亚阿博尔论文简介资本结构决策对于任何商业组织都是至关重要的。

外文翻译--公司的股权结构、公司治理和资本结构决策——来自加纳的实证研究本科毕业论文(设计)文翻译外原文:Ownership structure, corporate governance and capital structuredecisions of firmsEmpirical evidence from Ghana1. IntroductionThe relevance of capital structure to firm value remains fairly established following the seminal article by Modigliani and Miller, 1958 (Grabowski and Mueller, 1972; McCabe, 1979; Anderson and Reeb, 2003). Several theories including the pecking order theory, the free cash flow, the capital signaling, the trade-off, and market timing theories (windows of opportunities) and the fact that capital structure is voluntarily chosen by managers (Zwiebel, 1996) have been propounded to explain the choice of capital structure. Also, considerable research attention has been paid to the impact of agency costs on corporate financing since Jensen and Meckling (1976) published their paper.Crutchley and Hansen (1989) maintain that managers’ choice of stock ownershipin the firm, the firm’s mixture of outside debt and equity financing, and dividends aremeant to reduce the costs of agency conflicts. Bajaj et al. (1998) suggest that ownership is positively correlated with various measures of the debt-equity ratio (leverage), implying that ownership structure has a correlation with financial structure of firms (Kim and Sorensen, 1986; Mehran, 1992; Brailsford et al., 2002). Friend and Lang (1988) find that debt ratio is negatively related to managerial ownership. Brailsford et al. (2002) suggest that the relationship between managerial share ownership and leverage may in fact be inverted u-shaped.In addition, Berglo?f (1990) suggests that in countries in which firms are typically closely held, debt finance plays a more prominent role than in countries characterized by more dispersed ownership structures suggesting the impact of insider system of corporate governance on financing structure of firms. Thomsen and Pedersen (2000) report empirical evidence supporting the hypothesis that the identity of large owners –family, bank, and institutional investors – has important implications for financialstructure. In particular, they show that a more risk averse or a more patient entrepreneur issues less debt and more equity. Given that insider system of corporate governance is practiced among listed companies in Ghana (Bokpin, 2008), this study seeks to document the impact of ownership structure on corporate financing, a mark departure from Abor (2007).Claessens et al. (2002) maintain that better corporate governance frameworks benefit firms through greater access to financing, lower cost of capital, better performance and more favourable treatment of all stakeholders. Corporate governance affects the development andfunctioning of capital markets and exerts a strong influence on resource allocation. Corporate governance correlates with the financing decisions and the capital structure of firms (Graham and Harvey, 2001; Litov, 2005; Abor, 2007). However, management incentives that include stock options introduces issues for the alignment of managerial and shareholder interests. The question is which way does managerial ownership affect capital structure decisions of firms? How does the form of governance affect the choice of financing? The empirical evidence observed in the literature is inconclusive with much focus on developed capital markets.Unlike Abor (2007), this present study considers a much broader corporate governance index of the impact of ownership structure, managerial share ownership and other corporate governance variables on capital structure decisions of firms on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE). Earlier studies on the GSE have failed to consider the impact of these factors on corporate financing decisions of firms (Aboagye, 1996; Boateng, 2004; Abor and Biekpe, 2005; Abor, 2007) implying that, these studies invariably ignores a gamut of other relevant variables that are central to understandingthe relationship among ownership structure, corporate governance,and firms’financing decisions from a developing country perspective Aside, the study uses more recent data from 2002 to 2007 whilst employing a panel data analysis. The rest of the paper is divided into four sections. Section 2 considers the literature review; Section 3 discusses data used in the study and also details the model specifications used for the empirical analysis. Section 4 contains the discussion of the results and Section 5 summarizes and concludes the paper.2. Literature review2.1 Ownership structure and capital structureThe relationship between ownership and capital structures has attracted a considerable research attention over the last couple of decades. Jensen and Meckling (1976) defined ownership structure in terms of capital contributions. Thus, the authors saw ownership structure to comprise of inside equity (managers), outside equity and debt, thus proposing an extension of the form of ownership structure beyond the debt-holder and equity-holder view. Zheka (2005) unlike the above authors constructs ownership structure using variables including proportion of foreign share ownership, managerial ownership percentage, largest institutional shareholder ownership, largest individual ownership, and government share ownership. Bajaj et al. (1998) suggest that ownership is positively correlated with various measures of the debt-equity ratio (leverage), implying that ownership structure has a correlation with financial structure of firms.Friend and Lang (1988) find that debt ratio is negatively related to managerial ownership. Brailsford et al. (2002) suggest that the relationship between managerial share ownership and leverage may in fact be inverted u-shaped. Thus, debt first increases with an increase in managerial share ownership; but beyond a critical level of managerial share ownership debt may fall because there could be only a few agency related benefits by increasing debt further as the interests of managers and owners get very strongly aligned. Pindado and de la Torre (2005) conclude that insider ownership does not affect debt when the interest of managers and owners are aligned. Jensen and Meckling (1976), in relating capital structure to the level ofcompensation for CEOs came out with the findings that there is a positive correlation between the two and this was supported by Leland and Pyle (1977) and Berger et al. (1997) who assert the claim that the correlation between CEO compensation and capital structure is a positive one. However, Friend and Lang (1988), Friend and Hasbrouck (1988) and Wen et al. (2002) found a negative correlation between CEO compensation and the financial leverage of firms.Morck et al. (1988) argue that family ownership may give rise to greater leverage than in the case of disperse ownership, because of the non-dilution of entrenchment effects. Mishra and McConaughy (1999) document empirical evidence that funding family-controlled firms use less debt than non-funding family controlled firms. Thomsen and Pedersen (2000) report empirical evidence supporting the hypothesis that theidentity of large owners – family, bank, and institutional investors –hasimportant implications for financial structure. In particular, they show that a more risk averse or a more patient entrepreneur issues less debt and more equity. Anderson and Reeb (2003) further argue that family ownership reduces the cost of debt financing.Berglo?f (1990) suggests that in countries in which firms aretypically closely held, debt finance plays a more prominent role than in countries characterized by more dispersed ownership structures. Bergeret al. (1997) found less leverage in firms with no major stakeholder. Lefort and Walker (2000) conclude that groups are effective in obtaining external finance and that there are no significant differences in the capital structure of groups of different sizes. Brailsford et al. (2002) suggest that firms with external block holders have low-debt ratios consistent with Friend and Lang (1988), who earlier on had indicatedthat firms with large non-managerial investors have significantly higher debt ratios than those without non-managerial investors. Cheng et al. (2005) also indicates that the leverage increases as ownership concentration increases following rights issuance. Driffield et al. (2005) argue that, higher ownership concentration is associated with higher leverage irrespective of whether a firm is family owned or not. Pindado and de la Torre (2005) suggest that there is a positive relationship between ownership concentration and debt thus, all things being equal, ownership concentration encourages debt financing. However,they find the positive effect of ownership concentration on debt tobe smaller in cases of high free cash flow. They also find that ownership concentration does not moderate the relationship betweeninsider ownership and debt; in contrast, the relationship between ownership concentration and debt is affected by insider ownership. Thus, the debt increments promoted by outside owners are larger when managers are entrenched.2.2 Corporate governance and capital structureCorporate governance correlates with the financing decisions and the capital structure of firms (Graham and Harvey, 2001; Litov, 2005). Jensen (1986) postulates that large debt is associated with larger boards. Though Berger et al. (1997) concludes on a later date thatlarger board size is associated with low leverage; several other studies conducted in recent times have refuted this conclusion. Wen et al. (2002) posit that larger board size is associated with higher debt, either to improve the firm’s value or because the larger si ze prevents the board from reaching a consensus on decisions, indicating a weak corporate governance system. Anderson et al. (2004) further indicate that larger board size results in lower cost of debt, which serves as a motivationfor using more debt, and this has been confirmed by Abor (2007) who concludes that capital structure positively correlates with board size, among Ghanaian listed firms.In relation to the presence of external directors on the board, Wenet al. (2002) conclude that the presence of external directors on theboard leads to lower leverage, used by the firm, due to their superior control. However, Abor (2007) concludes that capital structurepositively correlates with Board composition among Ghanaian listed firms. And this is consistent with Jensen (1986) and Berger et al. (1997) who had earlier on concluded that firms with higher percentage of external directors utilize more debt as compared to equity.Berger et al. (1997) found less leverage in firms run by CEOs with long tenure and this was confirmed by Wen et al. (2002), who concludethat the tenure of CEO is negatively related to leverage, to reduce the pressures associate with leverage. Kayhan (2003) finds that entrenched managers achieve lower leverage through retaining moreprofits and issuing equity more opportunistically. Further, Litov (2005) supports this claim that entrenched managers adopt lower levelsof debt. Abor (2007) also asserts that entrenched CEOs employ lower debt in order to reduce the performance pressures associated with high-debt capital. However, Bertrand and Mullainathan (2003) refuted this fact by showing in their study that entrenched managers “enjoy the quiet life” by engaging in risk-reducing projects, indicating a positiverelationship between managerial entrenchment and leverage.Fosberg (2004) relates that firms with a two-tier leadershipstructure have high-debt/equity ratios. This was supported by Abor (2007), who concludes that capital structure positively correlates with CEO duality, which shows that firms on the GSE use more debt as the CEO duality increases.3. Research methodologyIn order to gain the maximum possible observations, pooled panel crossed-section regression data are used. Panel data analysis involves analysis with a spatial and temporal dimension and facilitates identification of effects that are simply not detectable in pure cross-section or pure time series studies. Thus, degrees of freedom are increased and collinearity among the explanatory variables is reduced and the efficiency of economic estimates is improved. The study is therefore based on the official data published by the cross-sectional firms for the various years covering a period from 2002 to 2007.Analytical frameworkThe general form of the panel regression model is stated as:'ititity=α+Xβ+μ i=1,…,N;t=1,…,Twhere subscript i and t represent the firm and time, respectively. In this case, i represents the cross-section dimension and t represents the time-series component. Y is the dependable variable which is a measure of capital structure. αis a scalar, βisitK *1 and Xit is the observation on K explanatory variables. We assume that theμfollow a one-way error component model:itiitμ=μ+νiwhereμ is time-invariant and accounts for any unobservableitindividual-specific effect that is not included in the regression model. The termνrepresents the remaining disturbance, and varies with the individual firms and time.Source: Godfred A. Bokpin and Anastacia C. Arko, 2009. “Ownership structure,corporate governance and capital structure decisions of firms Empirical evidence from Ghana” . Studies in Economics and Finance . Vol.26 No. 4.pp. 246-256.译文:公司的股权结构、公司治理和资本结构决策——来自加纳的实证研究一、引言继利亚和米勒1958年开创性的文章(格拉博夫斯基和米勒，1972年; 迈克，1979年;安德森和力波，2003年)之后，公司价值与资本结构相关性依然得到较大的认可。

毕业设计（论文）外文文献翻译毕业设计（论文）题目国有企业改制的财务问题—基于台州某百货公司的案例分析翻译（1）题目股权集中度在私营企业的职责：披露标准，审计员选择，审计等基础设施翻译（2）题目系财经学院专业会计学姓名班级学号指导教师1股权集中度在私营企业的职责：披露标准，审计员选择，审计等基础设施摘要我们依靠一个独特的数据集来估计对来自31个国家的股权集中度在190的私有化公司的披露标准和审计相关特性的影响。

会计透明度，有助纾缓该机构之间少数投资者和有控制权的股东的冲突。

在一定程度上的股权集中度，是显而易见的，因为征用公司的资源，取决于这些私人利益被隐藏起来。

在控制了其他国家一级和公司一级的影响因素，我们发现弱的证据表明，广泛披露标准（审计员选择）减少股权集中度。

相比之下，我们报告得强劲，稳健的证据表明，在国家证券法律指定一个较低的举证责任中，股权集中度低，在民事和刑事诉讼中反对审计员关于Ball[ 2001 ]预言。

同样地，我们的研究暗示少数的投资者在全世界合法的机构审计结果中财务报告没有更好的揭发标准。

1.导言在这篇文章里，我们提供来自31个国家的190个公司的披露标准和审计员等相关特性的新证据，来减少控制及少数股东之间的信息不对称。

我们主要是有助于现存研究通过检查审计纪律对股权集中度对于法定机构的重要性。

Ball[ 2001年P128 ]辩称孤立的改革，旨在改善财务报告质量等，需要一个国家的企业是跟随国际会计标准而不改变其证券法律，却持有审计更负责重大的误导财务报表这将是徒劳无益的行为：如果被迫提名单一位置由此而开始改变一个国家的系统中的公共财务报告和披露，我会坚持开放细则股东和贷款人的诉讼。

风险诉讼激励经理和审计师增加透明度，尤其是披露坏的决定和报告损失。

许多其他体制的特征-包括会计标准确实落实管理人员和财务报告的质量和披露实际取决于内在刺激经理和审计师的遭遇。

一个有效的对私营诉讼制度比外源性强加给各国政府的命令有更多的做更多改进实际实践。

外文标题：Capital structure and corporate performance: evidence from Jordan 外文作者：Rami Zeitun and Gary Gang Tian文献出处: Australasian Accounting Business & Finance Journal, 2007英文1689单词，8276字符，中文2309汉字。

此文档是外文翻译成品，无需调整复杂的格式哦！下载之后直接可用，方便快捷！价格不贵。

Capital structure and corporate performance: evidence from JordanRami Zeitun and Gary Gang TianThe objective of the current paper is to examine the effect which capital structure has on corporate performance in Jordan. There is a lack of empirical evidence about the effect of capital structure on the performance of firms in both developed and developing countries. Most of the previous evidence on capital structure comes from the determinants of corporate debt ratio. To the best of the auth ors’ knowledge, this research provides the first attempt to investigate the effect of capital structure on corporate performance in Jordan. Our reason for choosing Jordan as a case for this topic is its uniqueness, which we discuss below.First, the Jordanian economy has been subject to a large number of external shocks in the Middle East region during the period of our study. Secondly, the banking system in Jordan also makes this study unique.Thirdly, it is worth noting that both Islamic and non-Islamic banks have a credit policy.The concept of performance is a controversial issue in finance largely due to its multi- dimensional meanings. Research on firm performance emanates from organization theory and strategic management (Murphy et al., 1996). Performance measures are either financial or organisational. Financial performance such as profit maximisation, maximising profit on assets, and maximising shareholders' benefits are at the core of the firm’s effectiveness (Chakravarthy, 1986). Operational performance measures, such as growth in sales and growth in market share.Table 1 reports summary statistics for the variables used in the study.The average return to assets for the sample as a whole is 1.2%, while the average return to equity is about - 14.2%. The two accounting measures of performance show that Jordanian companies have a very low accounting performance. The four measures of market performance show a high percentage of performance compared with the accounting measures. For example, the average v alues of Tobin’s Q and MBVR are 170% and 195%, respectively. The high ratios for the market performance measures could be as a result of the increase in firms' share price and equity without any increase in the real activities performance of the firms.The results of the estimation of the panel data models with each of the performance measures and for the full sample of observations for the period 1989-2003 are displayed in Tables 3 to 6. The regression model using price per share to earnings per share (P/E)10 is not significant using any measure of capital structure and, hence, is not reported. The regression model using return on equity (ROE) is excluded from the analysis because the ROE measure does not have any significant variable in the estimation and the R-squared value using this measure in mostcases was less than 0.1%11. The market value of equity to book value of equity (MBVE) is also excluded from the analysis as the R-squared is very small and the result is very similar to Tobin’s Q12. These results make the ROA and Tobin’s Q the most powerful measures of performance in the Jordan case. Therefore, our discussion will concentrate on these two measures of performance beside the MBVR and PROF measures.The significance of the variable TAX suggests that the better performance of Jordanian companies is related to the higher corporate income tax payment, and also to other factors such as the firm’s risk, size, and debt ratio (see Tables 3 to 6). This result indicates that firms with high tax payments have a higher performance rate. The composition of the asset structure (TANGB) has a negative and significant impact on the accounting measure of performance (ROA) and the market measure of performance (MBVR). This result indicates that firms with a high ratio of TANGB have a lower performance ratio.The economic environment and policy and regional risk affect firms’ performance. Hypothesis 7 states that Political Instability around Jordan (regional crises) affects corporate performance. Table 8 presents the results of the estimation including Y ear (time) dummy variables to control for the macroeconomic variables and economic environment and policy impact on firms' performance. The estimated coefficients on time dummies suggest a significant effect of macro economic variables on firms’ performance, implying that major changes to the overall economic environment may significantly affect corporate performance. From 1991 to 1994, time dummies had a positive and significant effect on the firm’s performance measur ed by ROA (using TDTA).This paper examines the impact which capital structure has had on corporate performance in Jordan in which we control the effect of industrial sectors, regional risk, such as the Gulf Crisis 1990-1991 and the outbreak of Intifadah in the West Bank in September 2000. This paper bridges the gap in the relevant literature as state and regional development varies from one country to another and this development could affect the validity of the theories as the environment changes.There is no single study formulated in the Middle East that investigates the impact of capital structure on a firm’s performance. This study tried to fill the gap in this field by investigating the effect of capital structure on corporate performance by taking Jordan as a case study. Furthermore, this paper employed different measures of capital structure such as short- term debt, long-term debt, and total debt to total assets in order to investigate the effect of the debt structure on corporate performance. Investigating the effect of capital structure on corporate performance using market and accounting measures could be valuable as it provides evidence about whether the stock market is efficient or not.An unbalanced panel of 167 companies are studied in this paper, of which 47 firms defaulted due to severe financial distress problems resulting in insolvency. A firm’s capital structure was found to have a significant and negative impact on the firm’s performance measures in both the accounting and market measures. An interesting finding is that the STDTA has a positive and significant effect on the market performance measure (Tobin’s Q), which could to some extent support Myers's (1977) argument that firms with high short-term debt to total assets have a high growth rate and high performance. The results also show that high performance is associated with a high tax rate. This indicates that profitable firms pay a high tax rate. Firm size was found to have a positive impact on a firm’s performance, as large firms h ave low bankruptcy costs. In other words, bankruptcy costs increases as firm size decreases and, hence, bankruptcy costs negatively affects a firm’s performance.REFERENCESAbdel Shahid, S. (2003), “Does Ownership Structure Affect Firm V alue? Evidence from The Egyptian StockMarket”, Working Paper, [online], ().ASE (2002), Amman Stock Exchange, 2002, Fourth Annual Report, (Amman, Jordan).Ang, J. S., R. A. Cole, and Lin, J. W. (2000), “Agency Costs and Ownership Structure”,Journal of Finance 55, 81-106.Barclay, M. J., and Smith, C. W. (1995), “The Maturity Structure of Corporate Debt”, Journal of Finance 50, 609-32. Bradley, M., G. A. Jarrell, and Kim, E. H. (1984), “On the Existence of an Optimal Capital Structure: Theory andEvidence”, Journal of Finance 39, 857-878.Breusch, T., and Pagan, A. (1980), “The Lagrange-Multiplier Test and its Applications to Model Specification inEconometrics”, Review of Economic Studies 47, 239–253.Brick, I. E., and Ravid, S. A. (1985), “On the Relevance of Debt Maturity Structure”,Journal of Finance 40, 1423–37.Chakravarthy, B. S., (1986), “Measuring Strategic Performance”, Strategic Management Journal 7, 437-58.Demsetz, H., and K. Lehn, (1985), “The Structure of Corporate Ownership: Causes and Consequen ces”,Journal ofPolitical Economy 93, 1155-1177.Durand, R., and R. Coeurderoy, (2001), “Age,Order of Entry, Strategic Orientation, and OrganizationalPerformance”, Journal of Business Venturing 16, 471-94.Fisher, F. M., and J. McGowan, (1983), “On the Misuse of Accounting Rates of Return to Infer Monopoly Profits”,American Economic Review 73, 82-97.Gleason, K. C., L. K Mathur, and I. Mathur, (2000), “The Interrelationship between Culture,Capital Structure, andPerformance: Evidence from European Reta ilers”, Journal of Business Research, 50, 185-191. Gorton, G., and R. Rosen, (1995), “Corporate Control, Portfolio Choice, and the Decline of Banking”,Journal ofFinance 50, 1377-420.Greene, W. H., (2003). Econometrics Analysis (Prentice Hall, New Y ork).Harris, M., A. Raviv, (1991), “The Theory of Capital Structure”, Journal of Finance 46,297–355.Hoffer, C. W., and W. R. Sandberg, (1987), “Improving new venture performance: some guidelines for success”,American Journal of Small Business 12, 11-25.Judge, George, W. E., R. Griffiths, Carter Hill, Helmut Liitkepohl, and Tsoung-Chao Lee, (1985). The Theory andPractice of Econometrics (John Wiley and Sons, New Y ork).Kraus, A., and R. Litzenberger, (1973), “A State-Preference Model of Optimal Financial Le verage”,Journal ofFinance 28, 923-931.Krishnan, V. S., and R. C. Moyer, (1997), “Performance, Capital Structure and Home Country: An Analysis of AsianCorporations”. Global Finance Journal 8, 129-143.Lauterbach, B., and A. V aninsky, (1999), “Ownership Structure and Firm Performance: Evidence from Israel”,Journal of Management and Governance 3, 189-201.Long, W. F., D. J. Ravenscraft, (1984), “The Misuse of Accounting Rates of Return: Comment”, American EconomicReview 74, 494-500.Mehran, H., (1995), “Executive Compensation Structure, Ownership, and Firm Performance”, Journal of FinancialEconomics 38, 163-184译文：资本结构和公司绩效：来自约旦的证据Rami Zeitun and Gary Gang Tian本文研究的主要目的是考察资本结构对约旦公司绩效的影响。

Capital Structure and Firm Performance1. IntroductionAgency costs represent important problems in corporate governance in both financial and nonfinancial industries. The separation of ownership and control in a professionally managed firm may result in managers exerting insufficient work effort, indulging in perquisites, choosing inputs or outputs that suit their own preferences, or otherwise failing to maximize firm value. In effect, the agency costs of outside ownership equal the lost value from professional managers maximizing their own utility, rather than the value of the firm. Theory suggests that the choice of capital structure may help mitigate these agency costs. Under the agency costs hypothesis, high leverage or a low equity/asset ratio reduces the agency costs of outside equity and increases firm value by constraining or encouraging managers to act more in the interests of shareholders. Since the seminal paper by Jensen and Meckling (1976), a vast literature on such agency-theoretic explanations of capital structure has developed (see Harris and Raviv 1991 and Myers 2001 for reviews). Greater financial leverage may affect managers and reduce agency costs through the threat of liquidation, which causes personal losses to managers of salaries, reputation, perquisites, etc. (e.g., Grossman and Hart 1982, Williams 1987), and through pressure to generate cash flow to pay interest expenses (e.g., Jensen 1986). Higher leverage can mitigate conflicts between shareholders and managers concerning the choice of investment (e.g., Myers 1977), the amount of risk to undertake (e.g., Jensen and Meckling 1976, Williams 1987), the conditions under which the firm is liquidated (e.g., Harris and Raviv 1990), and dividend policy (e.g., Stulz 1990).A testable prediction of this class of models is that increasing the leverage ratio should result in lower agency costs of outside equity and improved firm performance, all else held equal. However, when leverage becomes relatively high, further increases generate significant agency costs of outside debt –including higher expected costs of bankruptcy or financial distress –arising from conflicts between bondholders and shareholders.1 Because it is difficult to distinguish empirically between the two sources of agency costs, we follow the literature and allow the relationship between total agency costs and leverage to be nonmonotonic.Despite the importance of this theory, there is at best mixed empirical evidence in the extant literature (see Harris and Raviv 1991, Titman 2000, and Myers 2001 for reviews). Tests of the agency costs hypothesis typically regress measures of firm performance on the equity capital ratio or otherindicator of leverage plus some control variables. At least three problems appear in the prior studies that we address in our application. In the case of the banking industry studied here, there are also regulatory costs associated with very high leverage.First, the measures of firm performance are usually ratios fashioned from financial statements or stock market prices, such as industry-adjusted operating margins or stock market returns. These measures do not net out the effects of differences in exogenous market factors that affect firm value, but are beyond management’s control and therefore cannot reflect agency costs. Thus, the tests may be confounded by factors that are unrelated to agency costs. As well, these studies generally do not set a separate benchmark for each firm’s performance that would be realized if agency costs were minimized.We address the measurement problem by using profit efficiency as our indicator of firm performance.The link between productive efficiency and agency costs was first suggested by Stigler (1976), and profit efficiency represents a refinement of the efficiency concept developed since that time.2 Profit efficiency evaluates how close a firm is to earning the profit that a best-practice firm would earn facing the same exogenous conditions. This has the benefit of controlling for factors outside the control of management that are not part of agency costs. In contrast, comparisons of standard financial ratios, stock market returns, and similar measures typically do not control for these exogenous factors. Even when the measures used in the literature are industry adjusted, they may not account for important differences across firms within an industry – such as local market conditions – as we are able to do with profit efficiency. In addition, the performance of a best-practice firm under the same exogenous conditions is a reasonable benchmark for how the firm would be expected to perform if agency costs were minimized.Second, the prior research generally does not take into account the possibility of reverse causation from performance to capital structure. If firm performance affects the choice of capital structure, then failure to take this reverse causality into account may result in simultaneous-equations bias. That is, regressions of firm performance on a measure of leverage may confound the effects of capital structure on performance with the effects of performance on capital structure.We address this problem by allowing for reverse causality from performance to capital structure. We discuss below two hypotheses for why firm performance may affect the choice of capital structure, the efficiency-risk hypothesis and the franchise-value hypothesis. We construct a two-equation structural model and estimate it using two-stage least squares (2SLS). An equation specifying profit efficiency as a function of the 2 Stigler’s argu ment was part of a broader exchange over whether productive efficiency (or X-efficiency) primarily reflects difficulties in reconciling the preferences of multiple optimizing agents – what is today called agency costs –versus “true”inefficiency, or failureto optimize (e.g., Stigler 1976, Leibenstein 1978). firm’s equity capital ratio and other variables is used to test the agency costs hypothesis, and an equation specifying the equity capital ratio as a function of the firm’s profit efficiency and other variables is used to test the net effects of the efficiency-risk and franchise-value hypotheses. Both equations are econometrically identified through exclusion restrictions that are consistent with the theories.Third, some, but not all of the prior studies did not take ownership structure into account. Under virtually any theory of agency costs, ownership structure is important, since it is the separation of ownership and control that creates agency costs (e.g., Barnea, Haugen, and Senbet 1985). Greater insider shares may reduce agency costs, although the effect may be reversed at very high levels of insider holdings (e.g., Morck, Shleifer, and Vishny 1988). As well, outside block ownership or institutional holdings tend to mitigate agency costs by creating a relatively efficient monitor of the managers (e.g., Shleifer and Vishny 1986). Exclusion of the ownership variables may bias the test results because the ownership variables may be correlated with the dependent variable in the agency cost equation (performance) and with the key exogenous variable (leverage) through the reverse causality hypotheses noted aboveTo address this third problem, we include ownership structure variables in the agency cost equation explaining profit efficiency. We include insider ownership, outside block holdings, and institutional holdings.Our application to data from the banking industry is advantageous because of the abundance of quality data available on firms in this industry. In particular, we have detailed financial data for a large number of firms producing comparable products with similar technologies, and information on market prices and other exogenous conditions in the local markets in which they operate. In addition, some studies in this literature find evidence of the link between the efficiency of firms and variables that are recognized to affect agency costs, including leverage and ownership structure (see Berger and Mester 1997 for a review).Although banking is a regulated industry, banks are subject to the same type of agency costs and other influences on behavior as other industries. The banks in the sample are subject to essentially equal regulatory constraints, and we focus on differences across banks, not between banks and other firms. Most banks are well above the regulatory capital minimums, and our results are based primarily on differences at the mar2. Theories of reverse causality from performance to capital structureAs noted, prior research on agency costs generally does not take into account the possibility ofreverse causation from performance to capital structure, which may result in simultaneous-equations bias. We offer two hypotheses of reverse causation based on violations of the Modigliani-Miller perfect-markets assumption. It is assumed that various market imperfections (e.g., taxes, bankruptcy costs, asymmetric information) result in a balance between those favoring more versus less equity capital, and that differences in profit efficiency move the optimal equity capital ratio marginally up or down.Under the efficiency-risk hypothesis, more efficient firms choose lower equity ratios than other firms, all else equal, because higher efficiency reduces the expected costs of bankruptcy and financial distress. Under this hypothesis, higher profit efficiency generates a higher expected return for a given capital structure, and the higher efficiency substitutes to some degree for equity capital in protecting the firm against future crises. This is a joint hypothesis that i) profit efficiency is strongly positively associated with expected returns, and ii) the higher expected returns from high efficiency are substituted for equity capital to manage risks.The evidence is consistent with the first part of the hypothesis, i.e., that profit efficiency is strongly positively associated with expected returns in banking. Profit efficiency has been found to be significantly positively correlated with returns on equity and returns on assets (e.g., Berger and Mester 1997) and other evidence suggests that profit efficiency is relatively stable over time (e.g., DeYoung 1997), so that a finding of high current profit efficiency tends to yield high future expected returns.The second part of the hypothesis –that higher expected returns for more efficient banks are substituted for equity capital –follows from a standard Altman z-score analysis of firm insolvency (Altman 1968). High expected returns and high equity capital ratio can each serve as a buffer against portfolio risks to reduce the probabilities of incurring the costs of financial distress bankruptcy, so firms with high expected returns owing to high profit efficiency can hold lower equity ratios. The z-score is the number of standard deviations below the expected return that the actual return can go before equity is depleted and the firm is insolvent, zi = (μi +ECAPi)/σi, where μi and σi are the mean and standard deviation, respectively, of the rate of return on assets, and ratios for those that were fully owned by a single owner-manager. This may be an improvement in the analysis of agency costs for small firms, but it does not address our main issues of controlling for differences in exogenous conditions and in setting up individualized firm benchmarks for performance.ECAPi is the ratio of equity to assets. Based on the first part of the efficiency-risk hypothesis, firms with higher efficiency will have higher μi. Based on the second part of the hypothesis, a higher μi allows the firm to have a lower ECAPi for a ven z-score, so that more efficient firms may choose lower equity capital ratios.文章出处：Raposo Clara C. Capital Structure and Firm Performance . Journal of Finance. Blackwell publishing. 2005, (6): 2701-2727.资本结构与企业绩效1.概述代理费用不管在金融还是在非金融行业，都是非常重要的企业治理问题。

外文文献：Capital structure, equity ownership and firm performanceDimitris Margaritis, Maria Psillaki 1Abstract：This paper investigates the relationship between capital structure, ownership structure and firm performance using a sample of French manufacturing firms. We employ non-parametric data envelopment analysis (DEA) methods to empirically construct the industry’s ‘best practice’frontier and measure firm efficiency as the distance from that frontier. Using these performance measures we examine if more efficient firms choose more or less debt in their capital structure. We summarize the contrasting effects of efficiency on capital structure in terms of two competing hypotheses: the efficiency-risk and franchise value hypotheses. Using quantile regressions we test the effect of efficiency on leverage and thus the empirical validity of the two competing hypotheses across different capital structure choices. We also test the direct relationship from leverage to efficiency stipulated by the Jensen and Meckling (1976) agency cost model. Throughout this analysis we consider the role of ownership structure and type on capital structure and firm performance.Firm performance, capital structure and ownershipConflicts of interest between owners-managers and outside shareholders as well as those between controlling and minority shareholders lie at the heart of the corporate governance literature (Berle and Means, 1932; Jensen and Meckling, 1976; Shleifer and Vishny, 1986). While there is a relatively large literature on the effects of ownership on firm performance (see for example, Morck et al., 1988; McConnell and Servaes, 1990; Himmelberg et al., 1999), the relationship between ownership structure and capital structure remains largely unexplored. On the other hand, a voluminous literature is devoted to capital structure and its effects on corporate performance –see the surveys by Harris and Raviv (1991) and Myers (2001). An emerging consensus that comes out of the corporate governance literature (see Mahrt-Smith, 2005) is that the interactions between capital structure and ownership structure impact on firm values. Yet theoretical arguments alone cannot unequivocally predict these relationships (see Morck et al., 1988) and the empirical evidence that we have often appears to be contradictory. In part these conflicting results arise from difficulties empirical researchers face in obtaining direct measures of the magnitude of agency costs that are not confounded by factors that are beyond the control of management (Berger and Bonaccorsi di Patti, 2006). In the remainder of this section we briefly review the literature in this area focusing on the main hypotheses of interest for this study.Firm performance and capital structureThe agency cost theory is premised on the idea that the interests of the company’s managers and its shareholders are not perfectly aligned. In their seminal paper Jensen and Meckling (1976) emphasized the importance of the agency costs of equity arising from the separation of ownership and control of firms whereby managers tend to maximize their own utility rather than the value of the firm. These conflicts may occur in situations where managers have incentives to take excessive risks as part of risk shifting investment strategies. This leads us to Jensen’s (1986) “free cash flow theory”where as stated by Jensen (1986, p. 323) “the problem is how to motivate managers to disgorge the cash rather than investing it below the cost of capital or wasting it on organizational inefficiencies.”Thus high debt ratios may be used as a disciplinary device to1来源：Journal of Banking & Finance , 2010 (34) : 621–632，本文翻译的是第二部分reduce managerial cash flow waste through the threat of liquidation (Grossman and Hart, 1982) or through pressure to generate cash flows to service debt (Jensen, 1986). In these situations, debt will have a positive effect on the value of the firm.Agency costs can also exist from conflicts between debt and equity investors. These conflicts arise when there is a risk of default. The risk of default may create what Myers (1977) referred to as an“underinvestment”or “debt overhang”problem. In this case, debt will have a negative effect on the value of the firm. Building on Myers (1977) and Jensen (1986), Stulz (1990) develops a model in which debt financing is shown to mitigate overinvestment problems but aggravate the underinvestment problem. The model predicts that debt can have both a positive and a negative effect on firm performance and presumably both effects are present in all firms. We allow for the presence of both effects in the empirical specification of the agency cost model. However we expect the impact of leverage to be negative overall. We summarize this in terms of our first testable hypothesis. According to the agency cost hypothesis (H1) higher leverage is expected to lower agency costs, reduce inefficiency and thereby lead to an improvement in firm’s performance.Reverse causality from firm performance to capital structureBut firm performance may also affect the choice of capital structure. Berger and Bonaccorsi di Patti (2006) stipulate that more efficient firms are more likely to earn a higher return for a given capital structure, and that higher returns can act as a buffer against portfolio risk so that more efficient firms are in a better position to substitute equity for debt in their capital structure. Hence under the efficiency-risk hypothesis (H2), more efficient firms choose higher leverage ratios because higher efficiency is expected to lower the costs of bankruptcy and financial distress. In essence, the efficiency-risk hypothesis is a spin-off of the trade-off theory of capital structure whereby differences in efficiency, all else equal, enable firms to fine tune their optimal capital structure.It is also possible that firms which expect to sustain high efficiency rates into the future will choose lower debt to equity ratios in an attempt to guard the economic rents or franchise value generated by these efficiencies from the threat of liquidation (see Demsetz, 1973; Berger and Bonaccorsi di Patti, 2006). Thus in addition to a equity for debt substitution effect, the relationship between efficiency and capital structure may also be characterized by the presence of an income effect. Under the franchise-value hypothesis (H2a) more efficient firms tend to hold extra equity capital and therefore, all else equal, choose lower leverage ratios to protect their future income or franchise value.Thus the efficiency-risk hypothesis (H2) and the franchise-value hypothesis (H2a) yield opposite predictions regarding the likely effects of firm efficiency on the choice of capital structure. Although we cannot identify the separate substitution and income effects our empirical analysis is able to determine which effect dominates the other across the spectrum of different capital structure choices.Ownership structure and the agency costs of debt and equity.The relationship between ownership structure and firm performance dates back to Berle and Means (1932) who argued that widely held corporations in the US, in which ownership of capital is dispersed among small shareholders and control is concentrated in the hands of insiders tend to underperform. Following from this, Jensen and Meckling (1976) develop more formally the classical owner-manager agency problem. They advocate that managerial share-ownership mayreduce managerial incentives to consume perquisites, expropriate shareholders’wealth or to engage in other sub-optimal activities and thus helps in aligning the interests of managers and shareholders which in turn lowers agency costs. Along similar lines, Shleifer and Vishny (1986) show that large external equity holders can mitigate agency conflicts because of their strong incentives to monitor and discipline management.In contrast Demsetz (1983) and Fama and Jensen (1983) point out that a rise in insider share-ownership stakes may also be associated with adverse ‘entrenchment’effects that can lead to an increase in managerial opportunism at the expense of outside investors. Whether firm value would be maximized in the presence of large controlling shareholders depends on the entrenchment effect (Claessens et al., 2002; Villalonga and Amit, 2006; Dow and McGuire, 2009). Several studies document either a direct (e.g., Shleifer and Vishny, 1986; Claessens et al., 2002; Hu and Zhou, 2008) or a non-monotonic (e.g., Morck et al., 1988; McConnell and Servaes, 1995; Davies et al., 2005) relationship between ownership structure and firm performance while others (e.g., Demsetz and Lehn, 1985; Himmelberg et al., 1999; Demsetz and Villalonga, 2001) find no relation between ownership concentration and firm performance.Family firms are a special class of large shareholders with unique incentive structures. For example, concerns over family and business reputation and firm survival would tend to mitigate the agency costs of outside debt and outside equity (Demsetz and Lehn, 1985; Anderson et al., 2003) although controlling family shareholders may still expropriate minority shareholders (Claessens et al., 2002; Villalonga and Amit, 2006). Several studies (e.g., Anderson and Reeb, 2003a; Villalonga and Amit, 2006; Maury, 2006; King and Santor, 2008) report that family firms especially those with large personal owners tend to outperform non-family firms. In addition, the empirical findings of Maury (2006) suggest that large controlling family ownership in Western Europe appears to benefit rather than harm minority shareholders. Thus we expect that the net effect of family ownership on firm performance will be positive.Large institutional investors may not, on the other hand, have incentives to monitor management (Villalonga and Amit, 2006) and they may even coerce with management (McConnell and Servaes, 1990; Claessens et al., 2002; Cornett et al., 2007). In addition, Shleifer and Vishny (1986) and La Porta et al. (2002) argue that equity concentration is more likely to have a positive effect on firm performance in situations where control by large equity holders may act as a substitute for legal protection in countries with weak investor protection and less developed capital markets where they also classify Continental Europe.We summarize the contrasting ownership effects of incentive alignment and entrenchment on firm performance in terms of two competing hypotheses. Under the ‘convergence-of-interest hypothesis’(H3) more concentrated ownership should have a positive effect on firm performance. And under the ownership entrenchment hypothesis (H3a) the effect of ownership concentration on firm performance is expected to be negative.The presence of ownership entrenchment and incentive alignment effects also has implications for the firm’s capital structure choice. We assess these effects empirically. As external blockholders have strong incentives to reduce managerial opportunism they may prefer to use debt as a governance mechanism to control management’s consumption of perquisites (Grossman and Hart, 1982). In that case firms with large external blockholdings are likely to have higher debt ratios at least up to the point where the risk of bankruptcy may induce them to lower debt. Family firms may also use higher debt levels to the extent that they are perceived to be less risky bydebtholders (Anderson et al., 2003). On the other hand the relation between leverage and insider share-ownership may be negative in situations where managerial blockholders choose lower debt to protect their non-diversifiable human capital and wealth invested in the firm (Friend and Lang, 1988). Brailsford et al. (2002) report a non-linear relationship between managerial share-ownership and leverage. At low levels of managerial ownership, agency conflicts necessitate the use of more debt but as managers become entrenched at high levels of managerial ownership they seek to reduce their risks and they use less debt. Anderson and Reeb (2003) find that insider ownership by managers or families has no effect on leverage while King and Santor (2008) report that both family firms and firms controlled by financial institutions carry more debt in their capital structure.外文翻译：资本结构、股权结构与公司绩效摘要：本文通过对法国制造业公司的抽样调查，研究资本结构、所有权结构和公司绩效的关系。

摘要在处理发达经济体的大多数研究中，委托-代理冲突并非传统意义上的委托-代理冲突，而是被确认为新兴经济体公司治理的主要问题。

控股股东与中小股东之间的委托—代理冲突主要是由于股权集中、家族制和控制范围广、企业集团结构、中小股东法律保护薄弱等原因造成的。

这种委托-代理冲突改变了公司治理过程的动态，反过来，需要采取与处理委托-代理冲突不同的补救措施。

本文从战略、金融、经济学等角度对委托—代理冲突的研究进行了回顾与综合，着重分析了委托—代理冲突的制度前因和组织后果。

由此产生的集成提供了一个基础，未来的研究可以继续建立。

介绍研究人员日益认识到，没有一个单一的机构模型能够充分地描述所有国家背景下的公司治理(La Porta等人，1997，1998；Lubatkin等人，2005a)。

公司治理的主要模式是发达经济体（主要是美国和联合王国）的产物，其中体制环境有助于相对有效地执行长臂机构合同（Peng，2003）。

在发达经济体，由于所有权和控制权常常是分离的，法律机制保护所有者的利益，因此受到极大关注的治理冲突是所有者（委托人）和管理者（代理人）之间的委托代理（PA）冲突（Jensen 和Meckl）。

ING，1976）。

然而，在新兴经济体，体制环境使得执行机构合同成本更高，问题也更大(.，1990；Wright等人，2005)。

这导致集中的企业所有权的盛行（DHARWADKAR等，2000）。

所有权集中，加上缺乏有效的外部治理机制，导致控制股东和少数股东之间的冲突更加频繁(Morck等人，2005)。

这导致了对公司治理的新视角的发展，该视角关注公司中不同主体之间的冲突。

这种模式被称为公司治理的主体-主体（PP）模式，它集中于公司的控制股东和少数股东之间的冲突（参见Dharwadkar等人，2000）。

（出现的问题，委托和代理委托和委托也就是大股东和少数股东）PP冲突的特点是所有权和控制集中，对少数股东的体制保护不力，以及治理薄弱的指标，例如公开交易的公司较少(La Porta等人，1997)，公司估值较低(Claessens等人，2002；La Porta等人，2002；Lins，20)。

中英文对照外文翻译(文档含英文原文和中文翻译)译文：公司治理与高管薪酬：一个应急框架总体概述通过整合组织和体制的理论，本文开发了一个高管薪酬的应急办法和它在不同的组织和体制环境下的影响。

高管薪酬的研究大都集中在委托代理框架上，并承担一种行政奖励和业绩成果之间的关系。

我们提出了一个框架，审查了其组织的背景和潜在的互补性方面的行政补偿和不同的公司治理在不同的企业和国家水平上体现的替代效应。

我们还讨论了执行不同补偿政策方法的影响，像“软法律”和“硬法律”。

在过去的20年里，世界上越来越多的公司从一个固定的薪酬结构转变为与业绩相联系的薪酬结构，包括很大一部分的股权激励。

因此，高管补偿的经济影响的研究已经成为公司治理内部激烈争论的一个话题。

正如Bruce，Buck，和Main指出，“近年来，关于高管报酬的文献的增长速度可以与高管报酬增长本身相匹敌。

”关于高管补偿的大多数实证文献主要集中在对美国和英国的公司部门，当分析高管薪酬的不同组成部分产生的组织结果的时候。

根据理论基础，早期的研究曾试图了解在代理理论方面的高管补偿和在不同形式的激励和公司业绩方面的探索链接。

这个文献假设，股东和经理人之间的委托代理关系被激发，公司将更有效率的运作，表现得更好。

公司治理的研究大多是基于通用模型——委托代理理论的概述，以及这一框架的核心前提是，股东和管理人员有不同的方法来了解公司的具体信息和广泛的利益分歧以及风险偏好。

因此，经理作为股东的代理人可以从事对自己有利的行为而损害股东财富的最大化。

大量的文献是基于这种直接的前提和建议来约束经理的机会主义行为，股东可以使用不同的公司治理机制，包括各种以股票为基础的奖励可以统一委托人和代理人的利益。

正如Jensen 和Murphy观察，“代理理论预测补偿政策将会以满足代理人的期望效用为主要目标。

股东的目标是使财富最大化；因此代理成本理论指出，总裁的薪酬政策将取决于股东财富的变化。

”影响积极组织结果的主要指标是付费业绩敏感性，但是这种“封闭系统”法主要是在英美的代理基础文献中找到，假定经理人激励与绩效之间存在普遍的联系，很少的关注在公司被嵌入的不同背景。

中文3150字，2100单词，10800英文字符出处：Abor J. The effect of capital structure on profitability: an empirical analysis of listed firms in Ghana[J]. Journal of Risk Finance, 2005, 6(November):438-445.外文翻译The effect of capital structure on profitability : an empirical analysis of listed firms in GhanaAuthor:Joshua AborIntroductionThe capital structure decision is crucial for any business organization. The decision is important because of the need to maximize returns to various organizational constituencies, and also because of the impact such a decision has on a firm’s ability to deal with its competitive environment. The capital structure of a firm is actually a mix of different securities. In general, a firm can choose among many alternative capital structures. It can issue a large amount of debt or very little debt. It can arrange lease financing, use warrants, issue convertible bonds, sign forward contracts or trade bond swaps. It can issue dozens of distinct securities in countless combinations; however, it attempts to find the particular combination that maximizes its overall market value.A number of theories have been advanced in explaining the capital structure of firms. Despite the theoretical appeal of capital structure, researchers in financial management have not found the optimal capital structure. The best that academics and practitioners have been able to achieve are prescriptions that satisfy short-term goals. For example, the lack of a consensus about what would qualify as optimal capital structure has necessitated the need for this research. A better understanding of the issues at hand requires a look at the concept of capital structure and its effect on firm profitability. This paper examines the relationship between capital structure and profitability of companies listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange during the period 1998-2002. The effect of capital structure on the profitability of listed firms in Ghana is a scientific area that has not yet been explored in Ghanaian finance literature.The paper is organized as follows. The following section gives a review of the extant literature on the subject. The next section describes the data and justifies the choice of the variables used in the analysis. The model used in the analysis is then estimated. The subsequent section presents and discusses the results of the empirical analysis. Finally, the last section summarizes the findings of the research and also concludes the discussion.Literature on capital structureThe relationship between capital structure and firm value has been the subject of considerable debate. Throughout the literature, debate has centered on whether there is an optimal capital structure for an individual firm or whether the proportion of debt usage is irrelevant to the individual firm’s value. The capital structure of a firm concerns the mix of debt and equity the firm uses in its operation. Brealey and Myers (2003) contend that the choice of capital structure is fundamentally a marketing problem. They state that the firm can issue dozens of distinct securities in countless combinations, but it attempts to find the particular combination that maximizes market value. According to Weston and Brigham (1992), the optimal capital structure is the one that maximizes the market value of the firm’s outstanding shares.Fama and French (1998), analyzing the relationship among taxes, financing decisions, and the firm’s value, concluded that the debt does not concede tax benefits. Besides, the high leverage degree generates agency problems among shareholders and creditors that predict negative relationships between leverage and profitability. Therefore, negative information relating debt and profitability obscures the tax benefit of the debt. Booth et al. (2001) developed a study attempting to relate the capital structure of several companies in countries with extremely different financial markets. They concluded that the variables that affect the choice of the capital structure of the companies are similar, in spite of the great differences presented by the financial markets. Besides, they concluded that profitability has an inverse relationship with debt level and size of the firm. Graham (2000) concluded in his work that big and profitable companies present a low debt rate. Mesquita and Lara (2003) found in their study that the relationship between rates of return and debt indicates a negative relationship for long-term financing. However, they found a positiverelationship for short-term financing and equity.Hadlock and James (2002) concluded that companies prefer loan (debt) financing because they anticipate a higher return. Taub (1975) also found significant positive coefficients for four measures of profitability in a regression of these measures against debt ratio. Petersen and Rajan (1994) identified the same association, but for industries. Baker (1973), who worked with a simultaneous equations model, and Nerlove (1968) also found the same type of association for industries. Roden and Lewellen (1995) found a significant positive association between profitability and total debt as a percentage of the total buyout-financing package in their study on leveraged buyouts. Champion (1999) suggested that the use of leverage was one way to improve the performance of an organization.In summary, there is no universal theory of the debt-equity choice. Different views have been put forward regarding the financing choice. The present study investigates the effect of capital structure on profitability of listed firms on the GSE.MethodologyThis study sampled all firms that have been listed on the GSE over a five-year period (1998-2002). Twenty-two firms qualified to be included in the study sample. Variables used for the analysis include profitability and leverage ratios. Profitability is operationalized using a commonly used accounting-based measure: the ratio of earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) to equity. The leverage ratios used include:. short-term debt to the total capital;. long-term debt to total capital;. total debt to total capital.Firm size and sales growth are also included as control variables.The panel character of the data allows for the use of panel data methodology. Panel data involves the pooling of observations on a cross-section of units over several time periods and provides results that are simply not detectable in pure cross-sections or pure time-series studies.A general model for panel data that allows the researcher to estimate panel data with great flexibility and formulate the differences in the behavior of the cross-section elements is adopted. The relationship between debt and profitability is thus estimated in the following regression models:ROE i,t =β0 +β1SDA i,t +β2SIZE i,t +β3SG i,t + ëi,t (1)ROE i,t=β0 +β1LDA i,t +β2SIZE i,t +β3SG i,t + ëi,t (2)ROE i,t=β0 +β1DA i,t +β2SIZE i,t +β3SG i,t + ëi,t (3)where:. ROE i,t is EBIT divided by equity for firm i in time t;. SDA i,t is short-term debt divided by the total capital for firm i in time t;. LDA i,t is long-term debt divided by the total capital for firm i in time t;. DA i,t is total debt divided by the total capital for firm i in time t;. SIZEi ,tis the log of sales for firm i in time t;. SGi ,tis sales growth for firm i in time t; and. ëi ,tis the error term.Empirical resultsTable I provides a summary of the descriptive statistics of the dependent and independent variables for the sample of firms. This shows the average indicators of variables computed from the financial statements. The return rate measured by return on equity (ROE) reveals an average of 36.94 percent with median 28.4 percent. This picture suggests a good performance during the period under study. The ROE measures the contribution of net income per cedi (local currency) i nvested by the firms’ stockholders; a measure of the efficiency of the owners’ invested capital. The variable SDA measures the ratio of short-term debt to total capital. The average value of this variable is 0.4876 with median 0.4547. The value 0.4547 indicates that approximately 45 percent of total assets are represented by short-term debts, attesting to the fact that Ghanaian firms largely depend on short-term debt for financing their operations due to the difficulty in accessing long-term credit from financial institutions. Another reason is due to the under-developed nature of the Ghanaian long-term debt market. The ratio of total long-term debt to total assets (LDA) also stands on average at 0.0985. Total debt to total capital ratio(DA) presents a mean of 0.5861. This suggests that about 58 percent of total assets are financed by debt capital.The above position reveals that the companies are financially leveraged with a large percentage of total debt being short-term.Table I.Descriptive statisticsMean SD Minimum Median Maximum ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ROE 0.3694 0.5186 -1.0433 0.2836 3.8300SDA 0.4876 0.2296 0.0934 0.4547 1.1018LDA 0.0985 0.1803 0.0000 0.0186 0.7665DA 0.5861 0.2032 0.2054 0.5571 1.1018SIZE 18.2124 1.6495 14.1875 18.2361 22.0995SG 0.3288 0.3457 20.7500 0.2561 1.3597━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Regression analysis is used to investigate the relationship between capital structure and profitability measured by ROE. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression results are presented in Table II. The results from the regression models (1), (2), and (3) denote that the independent variables explain the debt ratio determinations of the firms at 68.3, 39.7, and 86.4 percent, respectively. The F-statistics prove the validity of the estimated models. Also, the coefficients are statistically significant in level of confidence of 99 percent.The results in regression (1) reveal a significantly positive relationship between SDA and profitability. This suggests that short-term debt tends to be less expensive, and therefore increasing short-term debt with a relatively low interest rate will lead to an increase in profit levels. The results also show that profitability increases with the control variables (size and sales growth). Regression (2) shows a significantly negative association between LDA and profitability. This implies that an increase in the long-term debt position is associated with a decrease in profitability. This is explained by the fact that long-term debts arerelatively more expensive, and therefore employing high proportions of them could lead to low profitability. The results support earlier findings by Miller (1977), Fama and French (1998), Graham (2000) and Booth et al. (2001). Firm size and sales growth are again positively related to profitability.The results from regression (3) indicate a significantly positive association between DA and profitability. The significantly positive regression coefficient for total debt implies that an increase in the debt position is associated with an increase in profitability: thus, the higher the debt, the higher the profitability. Again, this suggests that profitable firms depend more on debt as their main financing option. This supports the findings of Hadlock and James (2002), Petersen and Rajan (1994) and Roden and Lewellen (1995) that profitable firms use more debt. In the Ghanaian case, a high proportion (85 percent) of debt is represented by short-term debt. The results also show positive relationships between the control variables (firm size and sale growth) and profitability.Table II.Regression model results━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Profitability (EBIT/equity)Ordinary least squares━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Variable 1 2 3SIZE 0.0038 (0.0000) 0.0500 (0.0000) 0.0411 (0.0000)SG 0.1314 (0.0000) 0.1316 (0.0000) 0.1413 (0.0000)SDA 0.8025 (0.0000)LDA -0.3722(0.0000)DA -0.7609(0.0000)R² 0.6825 0.3968 0.8639SE 0.4365 0.4961 0.4735Prob. (F) 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ConclusionsThe capital structure decision is crucial for any business organization. The decision is important because of the need to maximize returns to various organizational constituencies, and also because of the impact such a decision has on an organization’s ability to deal with its competitive environment. This present study evaluated the relationship between capital structure and profitability of listed firms on the GSE during a five-year period (1998-2002). The results revealed significantly positive relation between SDA and ROE, suggesting that profitable firms use more short-term debt to finance their operation. Short-term debt is an important component or source of financing for Ghanaian firms, representing 85 percent of total debt financing. However, the results showed a negative relationship between LDA and ROE. With regard to the relationship between total debt and profitability, the regression results showed a significantly positive association between DA and ROE. This suggests that profitable firms depend more on debt as their main financing option. In the Ghanaian case, a high proportion (85 percent) of the debt is represented in short-term debt.译文加纳上市公司资本结构对盈利能力的实证研究作者：乔舒亚阿博尔论文简介资本结构决策对于任何商业组织都是至关重要的。