Capital Structure Decisions: Which Factors Are Reliably Important?
TL;DR: This article examined the relative importance of many factors in the capital structure decisions of publicly traded American firms from 1950 to 2003 and found that the most reliable factors for explaining market leverage are: median industry leverage, market-to-book assets ratio (−), tangibility (+), profits (−), log of assets (+), and expected inflation (+).
Abstract: This paper examines the relative importance of many factors in the capital structure decisions of publicly traded American firms from 1950 to 2003. The most reliable factors for explaining market leverage are: median industry leverage (+ effect on leverage), market-to-book assets ratio (−), tangibility (+), profits (−), log of assets (+), and expected inflation (+). In addition, we find that dividend-paying firms tend to have lower leverage. When considering book leverage, somewhat similar effects are found. However, for book leverage, the impact of firm size, the market-to-book ratio, and the effect of inflation are not reliable. The empirical evidence seems reasonably consistent with some versions of the trade-off theory of capital structure.
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TL;DR: In this paper, applied researchers in corporate finance can address endogeneity concerns, including omitted variables, simultaneity, and measurement error, and discuss a number of econometric techniques aimed at addressing endogeneity problems, including instrumental variables, difference-in-differences estimators, regression discontinuity design, matching methods, panel data methods, and higher order moments estimators.
Abstract: This chapter discusses how applied researchers in corporate finance can address endogeneity concerns. We begin by reviewing the sources of endogeneity—omitted variables, simultaneity, and measurement error—and their implications for inference. We then discuss in detail a number of econometric techniques aimed at addressing endogeneity problems, including instrumental variables, difference-in-differences estimators, regression discontinuity design, matching methods, panel data methods, and higher order moments estimators. The unifying themes of our discussion are the emphasis on intuition and the applications to corporate finance.
1,460 citations
TL;DR: This paper found that the majority of variation in leverage ratios is driven by an unobserved time-invariant effect that generates surprisingly stable capital structures: high (low) levered firms tend to remain as such for over two decades.
Abstract: We find that the majority of variation in leverage ratios is driven by an unobserved time-invariant effect that generates surprisingly stable capital structures: High (low) levered firms tend to remain as such for over two decades. This feature of leverage is largely unexplained by previously identified determinants, is robust to firm exit, and is present prior to the IPO, suggesting that variation in capital structures is primarily determined by factors that remain stable for long periods of time. We then show that these results have important implications for empirical analysis attempting to understand capital structure heterogeneity.
1,166 citations
992 citations
TL;DR: For example, this article found that stock returns can explain about 40 percent of debt ratio dynamics over one to five-year horizons, while other proxies play a much lesser role in explaining capital structure.
Abstract: U.S. corporations do not issue and repurchase debt and equity to counteract the mechanistic effects of stock returns on their debt‐equity ratios. Thus over one‐ to five‐year horizons, stock returns can explain about 40 percent of debt ratio dynamics. Although corporate net issuing activity is lively and although it can explain 60 percent of debt ratio dynamics (long‐term debt issuing activity being most capital structure–relevant), corporate issuing motives remain largely a mystery. When stock returns are accounted for, many other proxies used in the literature play a much lesser role in explaining capital structure.
897 citations
TL;DR: Taxes, bankruptcy costs, transactions costs, adverse selection, and agency conflicts have all been advocated as major explanations for the corporate use of debt financing as mentioned in this paper, and these ideas have often been synthesized into the trade-off theory and the pecking order theory of leverage.
Abstract: Taxes, bankruptcy costs, transactions costs, adverse selection, and agency conflicts have all been advocated as major explanations for the corporate use of debt financing. These ideas have often been synthesized into the trade-off theory and the pecking order theory of leverage. These theories and the related evidence are reviewed in this survey. A number of important empirical stylized facts are identified. To understand the evidence, it is important to recognize the differences among private firms, small public firms and large public firms. Private firms seem to use retained earnings and bank debt heavily. Small public firms make active use of equity financing. Large public firms primarily use retained earnings and corporate bonds. The available evidence can be interpreted in several ways. Direct transaction costs and indirect bankruptcy costs appear to play important roles in a firm's choice of debt. The relative importance of the other factors remains open to debate. No currently available model appears capable of simultaneously accounting for all of the stylized facts.
748 citations
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors draw on recent progress in the theory of property rights, agency, and finance to develop a theory of ownership structure for the firm, which casts new light on and has implications for a variety of issues in the professional and popular literature.
49,666 citations
Book•
28 Jul 2013TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe the important ideas in these areas in a common conceptual framework, and the emphasis is on concepts rather than mathematics, with a liberal use of color graphics.
Abstract: During the past decade there has been an explosion in computation and information technology. With it have come vast amounts of data in a variety of fields such as medicine, biology, finance, and marketing. The challenge of understanding these data has led to the development of new tools in the field of statistics, and spawned new areas such as data mining, machine learning, and bioinformatics. Many of these tools have common underpinnings but are often expressed with different terminology. This book describes the important ideas in these areas in a common conceptual framework. While the approach is statistical, the emphasis is on concepts rather than mathematics. Many examples are given, with a liberal use of color graphics. It is a valuable resource for statisticians and anyone interested in data mining in science or industry. The book's coverage is broad, from supervised learning (prediction) to unsupervised learning. The many topics include neural networks, support vector machines, classification trees and boosting---the first comprehensive treatment of this topic in any book.
This major new edition features many topics not covered in the original, including graphical models, random forests, ensemble methods, least angle regression and path algorithms for the lasso, non-negative matrix factorization, and spectral clustering. There is also a chapter on methods for ``wide'' data (p bigger than n), including multiple testing and false discovery rates.
Trevor Hastie, Robert Tibshirani, and Jerome Friedman are professors of statistics at Stanford University. They are prominent researchers in this area: Hastie and Tibshirani developed generalized additive models and wrote a popular book of that title. Hastie co-developed much of the statistical modeling software and environment in R/S-PLUS and invented principal curves and surfaces. Tibshirani proposed the lasso and is co-author of the very successful An Introduction to the Bootstrap. Friedman is the co-inventor of many data-mining tools including CART, MARS, projection pursuit and gradient boosting.
19,261 citations
Posted Content•
TL;DR: In this paper, the benefits of debt in reducing agency costs of free cash flows, how debt can substitute for dividends, why diversification programs are more likely to generate losses than takeovers or expansion in the same line of business or liquidationmotivated takeovers, and why the factors generating takeover activity in such diverse activities as broadcasting and tobacco are similar to those in oil.
Abstract: The interests and incentives of managers and shareholders conflict over such issues as the optimal size of the firm and the payment of cash to shareholders. These conflicts are especially severe in firms with large free cash flows—more cash than profitable investment opportunities. The theory developed here explains 1) the benefits of debt in reducing agency costs of free cash flows, 2) how debt can substitute for dividends, 3) why “diversification” programs are more likely to generate losses than takeovers or expansion in the same line of business or liquidationmotivated takeovers, 4) why the factors generating takeover activity in such diverse activities as broadcasting and tobacco are similar to those in oil, and 5) why bidders and some targets tend to perform abnormally well prior to takeover.
14,368 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors predict that corporate borrowing is inversely related to the proportion of market value accounted for by real options and rationalize other aspects of corporate borrowing behavior, such as the practice of matching maturities of assets and debt liabilities.
12,521 citations
"Capital Structure Decisions: Which ..." refers background in this paper
...25 By way of comparison Rajan and Zingales (1995) suggest a basic model with 4 factors: tangibility, sales, market-to-book assets ratio, and profits....
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...Financially constrained versus unconstrained firms Myers (2003) has argued that “the theories are conditional, not general”....
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...Market timing, a relatively old idea (see Myers (1984)), is having a renewed surge of...
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...Myers (1984) proposed the “pecking order theory” in which there is a financing hierarchy of retained earnings, debt and then equity....
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...They directly increase the financing deficit as discussed in Shyam-Sunder and Myers (1999). These variables should therefore be positively related to debt under the pecking order theory....
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the different methods used in the literature and explain when the different approaches yield the same (and correct) standard errors and when they diverge, and give researchers guidance for their use.
Abstract: In both corporate finance and asset pricing empirical work, researchers are often confronted with panel data. In these data sets, the residuals may be correlated across firms and across time, and OLS standard errors can be biased. Historically, the two literatures have used different solutions to this problem. Corporate finance has relied on clustered standard errors, while asset pricing has used the Fama-MacBeth procedure to estimate standard errors. This paper examines the different methods used in the literature and explains when the different methods yield the same (and correct) standard errors and when they diverge. The intent is to provide intuition as to why the different approaches sometimes give different answers and give researchers guidance for their use.
7,647 citations