资本结构和企业价值之间的关系对公司治理的影响[外文翻译]

简析资本结构与公司治理及其相互关系

简析资本结构与公司治理及其相互关系摘要：本文讨论的是资本结构与公司治理的相互关系，并从资本结构着手，对公司治理中存在的问题给出一些解决的方案。

关键词：资本结构公司治理辩证统一资本结构和公司治理问题是两个具有重大理论价值和实践意义的研究课题，对这两个问题进行深刻的研究是公司能够稳定高效经营的保证。

而且，这两者之间本身也存在着相互影响、相互制约的辩证统一的关系。

一、资本结构及其对公司的重要意义资本结构是指企业各种资本的价值组成成分及其各成分之间的比例。

其定义有广义和狭义之分，广义的资本结构是指企业总资本价值的组成成分及其各成分之间的比例关系。

包括中长期和短期的资本价值。

狭义的资本结构仅指企业中长期资本价值的组成成分及各成分之间的比例关系，特别是指长期股权资本与债权资本的构成及其比例关系。

资本结构对公司具有重大的意义，具体表现为以下几个方面：首先，合理安排债务资本比例可降低企业的综合资本成本率。

一般情况下企业的负债性融资成本会比权益性融资的成本低，所以，企业可以在一定的风险要求下，通过提高资本负债率，达到降低平均资本成本的目的，进而提高企业的投资报酬率。

其次，有效安排资本结构中权益资本和负债资本的比例可以获得财务杠杆利益。

当企业经营状况好的情况下，即息税前利润增加时，税后利润也会相应增加，在这时提高资本结构中的负债比例可更大幅度的增加股东权益。

经营状况不佳时，通过降低负债资金的比例，可减少股东损失，降低财务风险。

第三，合理安排债务资本在总资本中的比例有利于增加公司的价值。

一般情况下，某公司的价值应该等于其债务资本的市场价值与权益资本的市场价值之和，用公式表示为：V=B+S。

式中：V——公司总价值，即公司总资本的市场价值；B——公司债务资本的市场价值；S——公司权益资本的市场价值。

上述公式清楚地表达了按资本的市场价值计量反映的资本属性结构与公司总价值的内在关系。

因此，合理安排资本结构有利于增加公司的市场价值。

资本结构与企业价值的关系

资本结构与企业价值的关系资本结构是指企业通过债务和股权所形成的资金组成情况，而企业价值是衡量企业综合实力的指标。

资本结构的优化对企业的发展和价值创造至关重要。

本文将探讨资本结构与企业价值之间的关系，并分析如何优化资本结构以提升企业价值。

一、资本结构的定义与影响资本结构是企业通过内外部融资渠道筹集资金的方式和比例。

它由股权和债务构成，股权代表所有者权益，债务代表借款或发行债券所形成的负债。

不同的资本结构对企业的经营和发展产生重要影响。

一方面，债务融资可以降低资金成本，提高企业盈利能力。

通过借款或发行债券，企业可以利用外部资金实现扩张和投资，加速业务发展，从而提升企业价值。

另一方面，股权融资可以增加企业的所有者权益，提升企业信誉和可持续发展能力。

股权融资能够吸引更多投资者参与企业经营，提供更多资源和机会，助力企业拓展市场，增加利润，进而提高企业价值。

二、资本结构与企业价值的关系资本结构对企业价值具有直接影响。

恰当的资本结构能够提高企业的融资效率、盈利能力和市场竞争力，从而提升企业价值。

1. 资本结构与企业风险企业的资本结构与其风险承受能力密切相关。

过高的债务比例可能导致企业财务风险增加，资金缺口无法偿还债务，进而影响企业信誉和经营能力，导致企业价值下降。

同时，过高的债务也会使企业在经营活动中面临较高的利息支出压力，降低企业可分配现金流，进一步影响企业发展。

相反，较高的股权比例也可能对企业价值产生负面影响。

股权融资能够提供稳定的资金来源，但会导致股权稀释和利润分配的不平衡。

如果股权比例过高，可能造成现有股东利益受损，限制企业未来发展和创新能力，进而影响企业的长期价值。

因此，企业应该根据自身经营情况、行业特点和市场需求，合理配置债务和股权比例，降低财务风险，提升长期价值。

2. 资本结构与融资成本资本结构对企业融资成本产生直接影响。

债务融资通常比股权融资成本更低，因为债权人承担的风险较小。

通过适度的债务融资，企业可减少融资成本，提高企业盈利水平，从而增加企业价值。

资本结构与企业绩效【外文翻译】

外文翻译Capital Structure and Firm Performance Material Source: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve SystemAuthor: Allen N. BergerAgency 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 empiricallybetween the two sources of agency costs, we follow the literature and allow the relationship between total agency costs and leverage to be non-monotonic.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 other indicator of leverage plus some control variables. At least three problems appear in the prior studies that we address in our application.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 firmperformance 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 firm’s equity capital ratio and other variables is use d 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 above.To 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 andownership 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 margin, rather than the effects of regulation. Our test of the agency costs hypothesis using data from one industry may be built upon to test a number of corporate finance hypotheses using information on virtually any industry.We test the agency costs hypothesis of corporate finance, under which high leverage reduces the agency costs of outside equity and increases firm value by constraining or encouraging managers to act more in the interests of shareholders. Our use of profit efficiency as an indicator of firm performance to measure agency costs, our specification of a two-equation structural model that takes into account reverse causality from firm performance to capital structure, and our inclusion of measures of ownership structure address problems in the extant empirical literature that may help explain why prior empirical results have been mixed. Our application to the banking industry is advantageous because of the detailed data available on a large number of comparable firms and the exogenous conditions in their local markets. Although banks are regulated, we focus on differences across banks that are driven by corporate governance issues, rather than any differences in-regulation, given that all banks are subject to essentially the same regulatory framework and most banks are well above the regulatory capital minimums.Our findings are consistent with the agency costs hypothesis – higher leverage or a lower equity capital ratio is associated with higher profit efficiency, all else equal. The effect is economically significant as well as statistically significant. An increase in leverage as represented by a 1 percentage point decrease in the equity capital ratio yields a predicted increase in profit efficiency of about 6 percentage points, or a gain of about 10% in actual profits at the sample mean. This result is robust to a number of specification changes, including different measures of performance (standard profit efficiency, alternative profit efficiency, and return on equity), different econometric techniques (two-stage least squares and OLS), different efficiency measurement methods (distribution-free and fixed-effects), different samples (the “ownership sample” of banks with detailed ownership data and the “full sample” of banks), and the different sample periods (1990s and 1980s).However, the data are not consistent with the prediction that the relationship between performance and leverage may be reversed when leverage is very high due to the agency costs of outside debt.We also find that profit efficiency is responsive to the ownership structure of the firm, consistent with agency theory and our argument that profit efficiency embeds agency costs. The data suggest that large institutional holders have favorable monitoring effects that reduce agency costs, although large individual investors do not. As well, the data are consistent with a non-monotonic relationship between performance and insider ownership, similar to findings in the literature.With respect to the reverse causality from efficiency to capital structure, we offer two competing hypotheses with opposite predictions, and we interpret our tests as determining which hypothesis empirically dominates the other. Under the efficiency-risk hypothesis, the expected high earnings from greater profit efficiency substitute for equity capital in protecting the firm from the expected costs of bankruptcy or financial distress, whereas under the franchise-value hypothesis, firms try to protect the expected income stream from high profit efficiency by holding additional equity capital. Neither hypothesis dominates the other for the ownership sample, but the substitution effect of the efficiency-risk hypothesis dominates for the full sample, suggesting a difference in behavior for the small banks that comprise most of the full sample.The approach developed in this paper can be built upon to test the agency costs hypothesis or other corporate finance hypotheses using data from virtually any industry. Future research could extend the analysis to cover other dimensions of capital structure. Agency theory suggests complex relationships between agency costs and different types of securities. We have analyzed only one dimension of capital structure, the equity capital ratio. Future research could consider other dimensions, such as the use of subordinated notes and debentures, or other individual debt or equity instruments.译文资本结构与企业绩效资料来源: 联邦储备系统理事会作者：Allen N. Berger 在财务和非财务行业，代理成本在公司治理中都是重要的问题。

资本结构与公司价值的关系

资本结构与公司价值的关系引言资本结构是指公司在运作过程中所选择的不同融资方式的组合，包括债务和股权。

而公司价值则取决于其盈利能力、成长潜力以及风险承受能力。

本文将探讨资本结构与公司价值之间的关系，并分析不同资本结构对公司价值的影响。

1. 资本结构的影响因素资本结构的选择对公司经营状况有着重要影响。

以下是几个主要的影响因素：A. 成本和风险：债务融资相比于股权融资具有较低的成本，但却带来了更高的风险，因为公司必须偿还债务利息和本金。

在选择资本结构时，公司需要考虑到这两方面的因素。

B. 经济周期：在经济繁荣时期，公司的盈利能力通常较强，因此更容易获得债务融资。

然而，在经济衰退时期，公司的盈利能力可能下降，使得融资变得更加困难。

C. 税收政策：不同国家的税收政策对资本结构选择产生了影响。

一些国家对股权融资给予税收优惠，而其他国家则提供优惠措施以鼓励债务融资。

2. 资本结构与公司价值资本结构对公司价值有着直接和间接的影响。

直接影响表现在：A. 税收优势：根据税收政策的不同，公司通过债务融资可以享受到税收优惠，从而减少企业所得税的负担。

这种税收优势可以提高公司的净利润，进而增加公司的价值。

B. 财务杠杆效应：当公司利用债务资金进行投资时，债务的杠杆效应可以放大公司盈利和投资回报的比例关系。

这种杠杆效应可以增加公司的利润和价值。

间接影响表现在：A. 信号效应：公司的资本结构可以向市场发出关于公司财务状况和前景的信号。

高比例的债务融资可能会使市场对公司的风险感到担忧，从而降低公司的估值。

相反，适度的债务融资可以表明公司有信心并具备良好的经营能力，有助于提高公司的估值。

B. 风险管理：通过适当的资本结构选择，公司可以平衡不同类型的风险。

债务融资可以帮助公司降低财务风险，而股权融资则可以分散经营风险。

通过管理风险，公司能够在竞争激烈的市场环境中更好地发展并提高公司价值。

3. 不同资本结构的案例分析为了更好地理解资本结构与公司价值之间的关系，我们可以通过分析不同资本结构下的公司进行案例研究。

资本结构与企业价值的关系

资本结构与企业价值的关系资本结构是指企业通过融资手段筹集的各种资本资源的构成和比重。

而企业价值是指企业在市场上所能创造的经济效益。

资本结构与企业价值之间存在着密切的关系，合理的资本结构能够有效地提升企业的价值。

本文将从企业的资本结构对企业价值的影响等方面来探讨资本结构与企业价值的关系。

一、资本结构的基本概念及类型资本结构是企业融资所形成的资本构成，主要由内部融资和外部融资两部分构成。

内部融资主要包括自有资本的利润留存和资产减值计提，外部融资主要包括债务融资和股权融资。

根据债务融资与股权融资的比重不同，资本结构可以分为债务型、股权型和混合型资本结构。

二、资本结构对企业价值的影响1. 资本结构对企业融资成本的影响不同的融资方式有不同的成本，债务融资相对于股权融资来说，具有较低的融资成本。

当企业的资本结构偏向债务融资时，可以降低融资成本，从而提升企业的盈利能力，进而提高企业的价值。

2. 资本结构对企业风险承受能力的影响债务融资相对于股权融资来说，存在较大的偿还压力和利息负担。

当企业的资本结构偏向债务融资时，如果遇到经营不善或者市场变化等风险因素，企业将可能面临偿债困难甚至破产的风险。

相比之下，股权融资能够分担企业的风险承受能力，降低企业的经营风险。

3. 资本结构对企业治理结构的影响资本结构的不同会对企业的治理结构产生直接的影响。

当企业的股权结构比较分散时，股东的权力较弱，企业治理结构较为松散，管理层的自由度相对较高，容易产生代理问题。

而当企业的股权结构较为集中时，股东的权力较强，能够更好地监督和约束管理层，提高企业的治理效率。

三、如何优化资本结构提升企业价值1. 合理配置资本企业应根据自身的经营状况和市场环境，合理配置内部和外部融资的比例。

可以通过增加自有资本的留存比例、引入风险投资等方式来改善资本结构，减少对债务融资的依赖。

2. 提高盈利能力企业应通过提高经营效益、扩大市场规模等方式，提高盈利能力，减少对外部融资的需求。

资本结构与企业价值

资本结构与企业价值资本结构是指企业的各种资金来源以及这些资金在企业内部的比例关系。

它直接关系到企业的财务状况和经营效益，进而对企业的价值产生重要影响。

本文将探讨资本结构与企业价值之间的关系，并分析如何优化资本结构以提升企业价值。

一、资本结构的构成资本结构由长期资本和短期资本组成。

长期资本包括股东权益和长期借款，它们对企业的长期发展起到重要作用。

股东权益包括股本和留存收益，是企业的净资产部分。

长期借款则是企业从金融机构等长期融资所得到的资金。

短期资本则是企业短期借款和其它应付款项，主要用于企业日常经营活动。

二、资本结构与企业价值之间的关系资本结构与企业价值之间存在着密切关系。

一个合理的资本结构能够最大化地提升企业的价值。

首先，资本结构直接影响企业的融资成本。

如果企业过度依赖债务融资，那么企业的债务成本会增加，从而降低企业的价值。

相反，如果企业能够吸引到更多的股东资金，降低债务比例，那么企业的融资成本将减少，从而提升企业的价值。

其次，资本结构还影响着企业的经营风险和财务稳定性。

偏向于债务融资的企业，总体上承担着更大的偿债压力，一旦遭遇经营困难，可能会面临更大的危机。

而倾向于股权融资的企业，由于承担的债务较少，经营风险相对较低，财务稳定性更好。

最后，资本结构还对企业的财务灵活性产生影响。

一个灵活的资本结构可以让企业更好地适应经营环境的变化。

如果企业过度依赖债务融资，财务灵活性会相应降低，企业在面对市场波动和经营调整时可能会受到更大的制约。

而适度依赖股权融资的企业，能够更好地应对市场变化，提高财务灵活性。

三、优化资本结构提升企业价值的方法1. 多元化融资渠道：企业应该积极探索多元化的融资方式，包括股权融资、债权融资、内部积累等，以降低融资成本，提高融资效率，优化资本结构。

2. 控制财务风险：企业应该合理控制债务比例，避免过度依赖债务融资。

通过提高盈利能力和现金流量，增强企业的财务稳定性，减少经营风险。

3. 提高财务灵活性：企业应建立起多样化的融资渠道，灵活运用各种财务工具，提高资金的可支配性，以应对市场波动和经营调整。

资本结构与企业价值的关系研究

资本结构与企业价值的关系研究随着市场经济的发展，企业在发展壮大的同时也面临着各种挑战。

资本结构是企业经营过程中至关重要的一环，它可以决定企业的债务水平、融资成本、股权结构等关键问题。

在如今的商业环境下，企业经营的成功与否往往取决于它的资本结构。

因此，深入研究资本结构与企业价值之间的关系，对于企业的发展具有重要的意义。

1. 资本结构对企业价值的影响资本结构是指企业在融资过程中所采用的各种融资方式和融资组合，包括债券、股票、贷款等。

它关系到企业的债务负担、税务成本和股权结构等方面，对企业经营的多个层面都有着重要的影响。

首先，合理的资本结构能够提高企业的财务风险。

当企业的融资主要依靠股票时，它的债务风险就会相对较低。

相比之下，过分倚重债券融资可能会增加企业的债务风险，进而影响企业的信用评级和投资者的信心，从而限制企业的融资渠道。

其次，资本结构还决定了企业的成本水平。

债券融资相对于股票融资来说，融资成本更低，但它也会带来更高的税务成本。

而股权融资的税务成本较低，但由于股票价格的波动性，股权融资的成本可能更加不稳定。

因此，企业应该结合自身情况，选择合适的融资方式，以降低成本、降低风险。

最后，资本结构还会影响企业的股权结构。

一些投资者喜欢债券融资，因为这样可以避免股权融资的重要性问题。

但过多的债务融资可能会导致企业的股权过于分散，从而影响企业的治理和发展。

2. 如何确定合理的资本结构确定合理的资本结构需要考虑多个方面的因素。

首先，企业管理者需要对企业的特性进行全面分析。

通过分析企业的经营状况、行业特点以及竞争环境，确定适合企业的资本结构。

其次，企业需要结合自身的财务状况，以及未来的发展方向，进行资本结构的规划。

在确定资本结构时，企业还应该充分考虑投资者的意愿。

比如，如果董事会决定采用股票融资，但对股票市场不熟悉的投资者可能会选择其他投资机会。

因此，企业需要对投资者的心理状态和行为特点进行分析，以确定合适的资本结构。

资本结构与企业绩效【外文翻译】

外文翻译Capital Structure and Firm Performance Material Source: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve SystemAuthor: Allen N. BergerAgency 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 empiricallybetween the two sources of agency costs, we follow the literature and allow the relationship between total agency costs and leverage to be non-monotonic.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 other indicator of leverage plus some control variables. At least three problems appear in the prior studies that we address in our application.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 firmperformance 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 firm’s equity capital ratio and other variables is use d 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 above.To 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 andownership 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 margin, rather than the effects of regulation. Our test of the agency costs hypothesis using data from one industry may be built upon to test a number of corporate finance hypotheses using information on virtually any industry.We test the agency costs hypothesis of corporate finance, under which high leverage reduces the agency costs of outside equity and increases firm value by constraining or encouraging managers to act more in the interests of shareholders. Our use of profit efficiency as an indicator of firm performance to measure agency costs, our specification of a two-equation structural model that takes into account reverse causality from firm performance to capital structure, and our inclusion of measures of ownership structure address problems in the extant empirical literature that may help explain why prior empirical results have been mixed. Our application to the banking industry is advantageous because of the detailed data available on a large number of comparable firms and the exogenous conditions in their local markets. Although banks are regulated, we focus on differences across banks that are driven by corporate governance issues, rather than any differences in-regulation, given that all banks are subject to essentially the same regulatory framework and most banks are well above the regulatory capital minimums.Our findings are consistent with the agency costs hypothesis – higher leverage or a lower equity capital ratio is associated with higher profit efficiency, all else equal. The effect is economically significant as well as statistically significant. An increase in leverage as represented by a 1 percentage point decrease in the equity capital ratio yields a predicted increase in profit efficiency of about 6 percentage points, or a gain of about 10% in actual profits at the sample mean. This result is robust to a number of specification changes, including different measures of performance (standard profit efficiency, alternative profit efficiency, and return on equity), different econometric techniques (two-stage least squares and OLS), different efficiency measurement methods (distribution-free and fixed-effects), different samples (the “ownership sample” of banks with detailed ownership data and the “full sample” of banks), and the different sample periods (1990s and 1980s).However, the data are not consistent with the prediction that the relationship between performance and leverage may be reversed when leverage is very high due to the agency costs of outside debt.We also find that profit efficiency is responsive to the ownership structure of the firm, consistent with agency theory and our argument that profit efficiency embeds agency costs. The data suggest that large institutional holders have favorable monitoring effects that reduce agency costs, although large individual investors do not. As well, the data are consistent with a non-monotonic relationship between performance and insider ownership, similar to findings in the literature.With respect to the reverse causality from efficiency to capital structure, we offer two competing hypotheses with opposite predictions, and we interpret our tests as determining which hypothesis empirically dominates the other. Under the efficiency-risk hypothesis, the expected high earnings from greater profit efficiency substitute for equity capital in protecting the firm from the expected costs of bankruptcy or financial distress, whereas under the franchise-value hypothesis, firms try to protect the expected income stream from high profit efficiency by holding additional equity capital. Neither hypothesis dominates the other for the ownership sample, but the substitution effect of the efficiency-risk hypothesis dominates for the full sample, suggesting a difference in behavior for the small banks that comprise most of the full sample.The approach developed in this paper can be built upon to test the agency costs hypothesis or other corporate finance hypotheses using data from virtually any industry. Future research could extend the analysis to cover other dimensions of capital structure. Agency theory suggests complex relationships between agency costs and different types of securities. We have analyzed only one dimension of capital structure, the equity capital ratio. Future research could consider other dimensions, such as the use of subordinated notes and debentures, or other individual debt or equity instruments.译文资本结构与企业绩效资料来源: 联邦储备系统理事会作者：Allen N. Berger 在财务和非财务行业，代理成本在公司治理中都是重要的问题。