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。
资本结构和企业价值之间的关系对公司治理的影响[外文翻译]
外文翻译The influence of corporate governance on the relation betweencapital structure and valueMaterial Source:Corporate Governance Author:Maurizio La Rocca Researches in Business Economics, and in particular, in Business economics and Finance have always analyzed the processes of economic value creation as their main field of studies. Starting from the provocative work of Modigliani and Miller (1958), capital structure became one of the main elements that following studies have shown as being essential in determining value. Half a century of research on capital structure attempted to verify the presence of an optimal capital structure that could amplify the company’s ability to create value.There is again quite a bit of interest in the topic of firm capital structure, on whether or not it is necessary to consider the important contribution offered by corporate governance as a variable that can explain the connection between capital structure and value, controlling opportunistic behavior in the economic relations between shareholders, debt holders and managers. In this sense, capital structure can influence firm value.Therefore, this paper examines the theoretical relationship between capital structure, corporate governance and value, formulating an interesting proposal for future research. The second paragraph describes the theoretical and empirical approach on capital structure and value, identifying the main threads of study. After having explained the concept of corporate governance and its connection with firm value, the relationship between capital structure, corporate governance and value, as well as the causes behind them, will be investigated.Capital structure: relation with corporate value and main research streams When looking at the most important theoretical contributions on the relation between capital structure and value, it becomes immediately evident that there is a substantial difference between the early theories and the more recent ones. Influence of corporate governance on the relation between capital structure and valueCapital structure can be analyzed by looking at the rights and attributes that characterize the firm’s assets and that influence, with different levels of intensity,governance activities. Equity and debt, therefore, must be considered as both financial instruments 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 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).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.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 d efining 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. Myers (1984) and Myers and Majluf (1984) show how firm financing 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 unchecked. 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’’.The B-C-A relation that indicates the relation between capital structure a nd value is actually explained thanks to a third variable (corporate governanc e) that ‘‘intervenes’’ (and for this reason is called an ‘‘intervening variable’’) in the relation between capital structure and value. This would create a ‘‘bri dge’’ by mediating between lever age and value, thus showing a connection th at otherwise would not be visible. It can not be said that there is no relation between capital structure and value (Modigliani and Miller, 1958), but the c onnection is mediated and, in an economic sense, it is formalized through a causal chain between variables. In other words, it is not possible to see a dir ect relation between capital structure and value, but in reality capital structure influences firm governance that is connected to firm value.Furthermore, the relation between capital structure and corporate governan ce becomes extremely important when considering its fundamental role in val ue generation and distribution (Bhagat and Jefferis, 2002). Through its interact ion with other instruments of corporate governance, firm capital structure bec omes capable of protecting an efficient value creation process, by establishing the ways in which the generated value is later distributed (Zingales, 1998); i n other words the surplus created is influenced (Zingales, 2000).Therefore, the relation between capital structure and value could be set u p differently if it were mediated or moderated by corporate governance. None theless, capital structure could also intervene or interact in the relation betwee n corporate governance and value. In this manner a complementary relationshi p, or one where substitution is possible, could emerge between capital structu re and other corporate governance variables. Debt could have a marginal role of disciplining management when there is a shareholder participating in own ership or when there is state participation. To the contrary, when other forms of discipline are lacking in the governance structure, capital structure could be exactly the mechanism capable of protecting efficient corporate governance, while preserving firm value.ConclusionThis paper defines a theoretical approach that can contribute in clearing up the relation between capital structure, corporate governance and value, whi le they also promote a more precise design for empirical research. Capital str ucture 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 invest ment policies are carried out efficiently while firm value is protected from op portunistic behavior.In conclusion, this paper defines a theoretical model that contributes to c larifying 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, loo k 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 shoul d be investigated in a cross-country analysis, to catch the role of country-spe cific factors.译文资本结构和企业价值之间的关系对公司治理的影响资料来源:公司治理作者:莫里吉奥拉罗卡在商业经济的研究中,尤其是经营经济学和金融学,总是将分析创造经济价值的进程作为他们研究的主要领域。
最优资本结构对经济及其它价值的作用外文翻译
本科毕业论文(设计)外文翻译原文:Optimal Capital StructureReflections on Economic and Other ValuesOver the last few decades studies have been produced on the effect of other stake holders’ interests on capital structure. Well-known examples are the interests of customers who receive product or service guarantees from the company. Another area that has received considerable attention is the relation between managerial incentives and capital structure (Ibid.). Furthermore, the issue of corporate control 1 and, related, the issue of corporate governance , receive a lion’s part of the more recent academic attention for capital structure decisions.From all these studies, one thing is clear: The capital structure decision (or rather ,the management of the capital structure over time) involves more issues than the maximization of the firm’s market value alone. In this paper, we give an overview of the different objectives and considerations that have been proposed in the literature. We make a distinction between two bro adly defined situations. The first is the traditional case of the firm that strives for the maximization of the value of the shares for the current shareholders. Whenever other considerations than value maximization enter capital structure decisions, these considerations have to be instrumental to the goal of value maximization. The second case concerns the firm that explicitly chooses for more objectives than value maximization alone. This may be because the shareholders adopt a multiple stakeholders approach or because of a different ownership structure than the usual corporate structure dominating finance literature. An example of the latter is the cooperation, a legal entity which can be found, in among others, many European countries. For a discussion on why firms are facingmultiple goals, we refer to Hallerbach and Spronk 。
资本结构中英文对照外文翻译文献
中英文对照外文翻译(文档含英文原文和中文翻译)The effect of capital structure on profitability : an empirical analysis of listed firms in Ghana IntroductionThe 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 b enefits. 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 thatthe 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 positive relationship 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 thecross-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;. SIZE i,t is the log of sales for firm i in time t;. SG i,t is sales growth for firm i in time t; and. ëi,t is 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) invested 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 are relatively 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)R²0.6825 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。
资本结构、股权结构与公司绩效外文翻译
资本结构、股权结构与公司绩效外文翻译中文2825字1868单词外文文献: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 take1来源:Journal of Banking & Finance , 2010 (34) : 621–632,本文翻译的是第二部分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 pro blem 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 to 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 structure But 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 andincome 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 andMeans (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 may reduce 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 tha t 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 debtas 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 by debtholders (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 leveragewhile 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。
中英文外文文献翻译资本结构理论与企业资本结构优化
本科毕业设计(论文)中英文对照翻译(此文档为word格式,下载后您可任意修改编辑!)文献出处:Ashkanasy N M. The study on capital structure theory and the optimization of enterprise capital [J]. Journal of Management, 2016, 5(3): 235-254.原文The study on capital structure theory and the optimization ofenterprise capital structureAshkanasy N MAbstractIn this paper, corporate finance is an important content of modern enterprise management decision. Around the existence of optimal capitalstructure has been a lot of controversy. Given investment decisions, whether an enterprise to change its value by changing the capital structure and the cost of capital, namely whether there is a market make the enterprise value maximization, or make the enterprise capital structure of minimizing the cost of capital? To this problem has different answers in different stages of development, has formed many theory of capital structure.Key words: Capital structure; financial structure; Optimization; Financial leverage1 IntroductionIn financial theory, capital structure due to the different understanding of "capital" in the broad sense and narrow sense two explanations: one explanation is that the "capital" as all funding sources, the structure of the generalized capital structure refers to the entire capital, the relationship between the contrast of their own capital and debt capital, as the American scholar Alan c. Shapiro points out that "the company's capital structure - all the debt and equity financing; an alternative explanation is that if the" capital "is defined as a long-term funding sources, capital structure refers to the narrow sense of their own capital and long-term debt capital, and the tension and the short-term debt capital as the business capital management. Whether it is a broad concept ornarrow understanding of the capital structure is to discuss the proportion of equity capital and debt capital relations. 2 The capital structure theory Capital structure theory has experienced a process of gradually forming, developing and perfecting. First proposed the theory of American economist David Durand (David Durand) thinks that enterprise's capital structure is in accordance with the method of net income, net operating income method and traditional method, in 1958 di Gayle Anne (Franco Modigliani and Miller (Mertor Miller) and put forward the famous MM theory, created the modern capital structure theory, on this basis, the later generations and further put forward many new theory: 2.1 Net Income Theory (Net Income going) Net income theory on the premise of two assumptions --, investors with a fixed proportion of investment valuation or enterprise's net income. Enterprises to raise debt funds needed for a fixed rate. Therefore, the theory is that: the enterprise use of debt financing is always beneficial, can reduce the comprehensive cost of capital of enterprise. This is because the debt financing in the whole capital of enterprise, the bigger the share, the comprehensive cost of capital is more c lose to the cost of debt, and because the cost of debt is generally low, so, the higher the debt level, comprehensive capital cost is lower, the greater the enterprise value. When the debt ratio reached 100%, the firm will achieve maximum value.2.2 Theory of Net Operating Income (Net Operating Income going) Netoperating income theory is that, regardless of financial leverage, debt interest rates are fixed. If enterprises increase the lower cost of debt capital, but even if the cost of debt remains unchanged, but due to the increased the enterprise risk, can also lead to the rising cost of equity capital, it a liter of a fall, just offset, the enterprise cost of capital remain unchanged. Is derived as a result, the theory "" does not exist an optimal capital structure of the conclusion.2.3 Traditional Theory (Traditional going) Traditional theory is that the net income and net operating income method of compromise. It thinks, the enterprise use of financial leverage although will lead to rising cost of equity, but within limits does not completely offset the benefits of using the low cost of debt, so can make comprehensive capital cost reduction, increase enterprise value. But once exceed this limit, rights and interests of the rising cost of no longer can be offset by the low cost of debt, the comprehensive cost of capital will rise again. Since then, the cost of debt will rise, leading to a comprehensive capital costs rise more rapidly. Comprehensive cost of capital from falling into a turning point, is the lowest, at this point, to achieve the optimal capital structure. The above three kinds of capital structure theory is referred to as "early capital structure theory", their common features are: three theories are in corporate and personal income tax rate is zero under the condition of the proposed. Three theories and considering the capital structure of the dual effects of the cost of capital and enterprise value.Three theories are prior to 1958. Many scholars believe that the theory is not based on thorough analysis.3 Related theories3.1 Balance TheoryIt centered on the MM theory of modern capital structure theory development to peak after tradeoff theory. Trade-off theory is based on corporate MM model and miller, revised to reflect the financial pinch cost (also known as the financial crisis cost) and a model of agent cost.(1) the cost of financial constraints. Many enterprises always experience of financial constraints, some of them will be forced to go bankrupt. When the financial constraints but also not bankruptcy occurs, may appear the following situation: disputes between owners and creditors often leads to inventory and fixed assets on the material damaged or obsolete. Attorney fees, court fees and administrative costs to devour enterprise wealth, material loss and plus the legal and administrative expenses referred to as the "direct costs" of bankruptcy. Financial pinch will only occur in business with debt, no liability companies won't get into the mud. So with more debt, the fixed interest rate, and the greater the profitability of the probability of large leading to financial constraints and the cost of the higher the probability of occurrence. Financial pinch probability high will reduce the present value of the enterprise, to improve the cost ofcapital.(2) the agency cost. Because shareholders exists the possibility of using a variety of ways from the bondholders who benefit, bonds must have a number of protective constraint clauses. These terms and conditions in a certain extent constrained the legal management of the enterprise. Also must supervise the enterprise to ensure compliance with these terms and conditions, the cost of supervision and also upon the shareholders with higher debt costs. Supervise cost that agency cost is will raise the cost of debt to reduce debt interest. When the tax benefits and liabilities of financial constraints and agency costs when balance each other, namely the costs and benefits offset each other, determine the optimal capital structure. Equilibrium theory emphasizes the liabilities increase will cause the risk of bankruptcy and rising costs, so as to restrict the enterprise infinite pursuit of the behavior of tax preferential policies. In this sense, the enterprise the best capital structure is the balance of tax revenue and financial constraints caused by all kinds of costs as a result, when the marginal debt tax shield benefit is equal to the marginal cost of financial constraints, the enterprise value maximum, to achieve the optimal capital structure.3.2 Asymmetric Information TheoryAsymmetric Information and found)Due to the trade-off theory has long been limited to bankruptcy cost and tax benefit both conceptual framework, to the late 1970 s, the theory is centered on asymmetricinformation theory of new capital structure theory. So-called asymmetric information is in the information management and investors are not equal, managers than investors have more and more accurate information, and managers try to existing shareholders rather than new seeks the best interests of shareholders, so if business prospect is good, the manager will not issue new shares, but if the prospects, will make the cost of issuing new shares to raise too much, this factor must be considered in the capital structure decision. The significance of these findings to the enterprise's financial policy lies in: first it prompted enterprise reserve a certain debt capacity so as to internal lack of funding for new investment projects in the future debt financing. In addition, in order to avoid falling stock prices, managers often don't have to equity financing, and prefer to use external funding. The central idea is: internal financing preference, if you need external finance, preferences of creditor's rights financing. Can in order to save the ability to issue new debt at any time, the number of managers to borrow is usually less than the number of enterprises can take, in order to keep some reserves. Ross (s. Ross) first systematically introduce the theory of asymmetric information from general economics enterprise capital structure analysis, then, tal (e. Talmon), haeckel (Heikel) development from various aspects, such as the theory. After the 1980 s, thanks to the new institutional economics, and gradually formed a financial contract theory, corporate governance structure theory of capitalstructure theory, both of which emphasize enterprise contractual and incomplete contract, financial contract theory focuses on the design of optimal financial contract, and the arrangement of enterprise governance structure theory focuses on the right, focuses on the analysis of the relationship between capital structure and corporate governance.4 the capital structure theory of adaptability analysis On the one hand, capital structure theory especially the theory of modern capital structure is the important contribution is not only put forward "the existence of the optimal capital structure" this financial proposition, and that the optimal combination of the capital structure, objectively and make us on capital structure and its influence on the enterprise value have a clear understanding. The essence of these theories has direct influence and infiltrate into our country financial theory, and gives us enlightenment in many aspects: Because of various financing way, channel in financing costs, risks, benefits, constraints, as well as differences, seeking suitable capital structure is the enterprise financial management, especially the important content of financing management, must cause our country attaches great importance to the financial theory and financial practice. Capital structure decision despite the enterprise internal and external relationships and factor of restriction and influence, but its decision-making is the enterprise, the enterprise to the factors related to capital structure and the relationship between the quantitativeand qualitative analysis, discusses some principles and methods of enterprise capital structure optimization decision. Any enterprise capital structure in the design, all should leave room, maintain appropriate maneuver ability of financing, the financing environment in order to cope with the volatility and deal with unexpected events occur at any time. In general, businesses leverage ratio is high, has an adverse effect on the whole social and economic development, easily led to the decrease of the enterprise itself the economic benefits and losses and bankruptcies, deepen the entire social and economic development is not stable, increase the financial burden, cause inflation, not conducive to the transformation of industrial structure, and lower investment efficiency. Therefore, the enterprise capital structure should be in accordance with the business owners, creditors, and the public can bear the risk of the society in different aspects.译文资本结构理论与企业资本结构优化Ashkanasy N M摘要企业融资是现代企业经营决策的一项重要内容。
资本结构与绩效外文翻译
资本结构与公司绩效:来自约旦的证据最优资本结构的主题一直是许多研究的主题。
有人认为,高盈利的公司不一定比低盈利的公司拥有更高的负债比率。
也有人认为,具有高增长率的企业有较高的债务权益比率。
破产成本(代理公司规模)也被认为是一个重要的影响资本结构因素(Kraus and Litzenberger, 1973; Harris and Raviv, 1991)。
如果这三个因素被认为是资本结构的决定因素,那么这些因素可以用来确定公司绩效。
在实践中,企业经理人都能够找出最佳的资本结构,减少一家公司的融资成本,从而最大限度地提高公司的收入回报。
如果一个公司的资本结构影响公司业绩,那么它是合理的预期,该公司的资本结构会影响公司的健康和其违约的可能性。
从债权人的角度看,它是可能的,银行的债务权益比艾滋病在了解银行的风险管理策略,以及如何确定违约的可能性,陷入财务困境的企业。
总之,对于学者和从业人员来说,资本结构和公司业绩的问题是重要的。
当前文件的目的是研究资本结构对公司业绩在约旦的效果。
有一个缺乏有关资本结构的影响表现在发达国家和发展中国家的企业的经验证据。
在资本结构上以前的证据大多来自企业资产负债率的决定因素。
据作者所知,这项研究提供了第一次尝试探讨约旦的资本结构对公司绩效。
我们之所以选择约旦为例,这一主题是其独特性,我们在下面讨论。
首先,我们的研究期间约旦的经济一直受到中东地区的大量外部冲击。
在1990-1991年爆发了第一次海湾战争。
同时由于这场战争,移民工人和难民回归,增加了在约旦的贫困和失业水平。
例如,在那段时间(世界银行,2003),超过30万人从海湾国家返回约旦。
此外,在约旦河西岸和加沙地带发生的持续不断的冲突,和2003年的第二次海湾战争对约旦的旅游和投资的产生了负面影响。
此外,约旦受到于2000年9月开始的巴勒斯坦起义1的严重影响。
巴勒斯坦起义对大部分出口到这些邻国的约旦公司的公司业绩产生负面影响。
资本结构英文参考文献
资本结构英文参考文献Evaluating A Company's Capital StructureFor stock investors that favor companies with good fundamentals, a "strong" balance sheet is an important consideration for investing in a company's stock. The strength of a company' balance sheet can be evaluated by three broad categories of investment-quality measurements: working capital adequacy, asset performance and capital structure. In this article, we'll look at evaluating balance sheet strength based on the composition of a company's capital structure..A company's capitalization (not to be confused with market capitalization) describes the composition of a company's permanent or long-term capital, which consists of a combination of debt and equity. A healthy proportion of equity capital, as opposed to debt capital, in a company's capital structure is an indication of financial fitness.Clarifying Capital Structure Related TerminologyThe equity part of the debt-equity relationship is the easiest to define. In a company's capital structure, equity consists of a company's common and preferred stock plus retained earnings, which are summed upin the shareholders' equity account on a balance sheet. This invested capital and debt, generally of the long-term variety, comprises a company's capitalization, i.e. a permanent type of funding to support a company's growth and related assets.A discussion of debt is less straightforward. Investment literature often equates a company's debt with its liabilities. Investors should understand that there is a difference between operational and debt liabilities - it is the latter that forms the debt component of a company's capitalization - but that's not the end of the debt story.Among financial analysts and investment research services, there is no universal agreement as to what constitutes a debt liability. For many analysts, the debt component in a company's capitalization is simply a balance sheet's long-term debt. This definition is too simplistic. Investors should stick to a stricter interpretation of debt where the debt component of a company's capitalization should consist of the following: short-term borrowings (notes payable), the current portion of long-termdebt, long-term debt, two-thirds (rule of thumb) of the principal amount of operating leases and redeemable preferred stock. Using a comprehensive total debt figure is a prudent analytical tool for stock investors.It's worth noting here that both international and U.S. financial accounting standards boards are proposing rule changes that would treat operating leases and pension "projected-benefits" as balance sheet liabilities. The new proposed rules certainly alert investors to the true nature of these off-balance sheet obligations that have all the earmarks of debt. (To read more on liabilities, see Off-Balance-Sheet Entities: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly and Uncovering Hidden Debt.)Is there an optimal debt-equity relationship?In financial terms, debt is a good example of the proverbial two-edged sword. Astute use of leverage (debt) increases the amount of financial resources available to a company for growth and expansion. The assumption is that management can earn more on borrowed funds than it pays in interest expense and fees on these funds. However, as successful as this formula may seem, it does require that a company maintain asolid record of complying with its various borrowing commitments. (For more stories on company debt loads, see When Companies Borrow Money, Spotting Disaster and Don't Get Burned by the Burn Rate.)A company considered too highly leveraged (too much debt versus equity) may find its freedom of action restricted by its creditorsand/or may have its profitability hurt as a result of paying high interest costs. Of course, the worst-case scenario would be having trouble meeting operating and debt liabilities during periods of adverse economic conditions. Lastly, a company in a highly competitive business, if hobbled by high debt, may find its competitors taking advantage ofits problems to grab more market share.Unfortunately, there is no magic proportion of debt that a company can take on. The debt-equity relationship varies according to industries involved, a company's line of business and its stage of development. However, because investors are better off putting their money into companies with strong balance sheets, common sense tells us that these companies should have, generally speaking, lower debt and higher equitylevels.Capital Ratios and IndicatorsIn general, analysts use three different ratios to assess thefinancial strength of a company's capitalization structure. The first two, the so-called debt and debt/equity ratios, are popular measurements; however, it's the capitalization ratio that delivers the key insights to evaluating a company's capital position.The debt ratio compares total liabilities to total assets. Obviously, more of the former means less equity and, therefore, indicates a more leveraged position. The problem with this measurement is that it is too broad in scope, which, as a consequence, gives equal weight to operational and debt liabilities. The same criticism can be applied to the debt/equity ratio, which compares total liabilities to total shareholders' equity. Current and non-current operational liabilities, particularly the latter, represent obligations that will be with the company forever. Also, unlike debt, there are no fixed payments of principal or interest attached to operational liabilities.The capitalization ratio (total debt/total capitalization) compares the debt component of a company's capital structure (the sum of obligations categorized as debt + total shareholders' equity) to the equity component. Expressed as a percentage, a low number is indicative of a healthy equity cushion, which is always more desirable than a high percentage of debt. (To continue reading about ratios, see Debt Reckoning.)Additional Evaluative Debt-Equity ConsiderationsCompanies in an aggressive acquisition mode can rack up a large amount of purchased goodwill in their balance sheets. Investors need to be alert to the impact of intangibles on the equity component of a company's capitalization. A material amount of intangible assets need to be considered carefully for its potential negative effect as a deduction (or impairment) of equity, which, as a consequence, will adverselyaffect the capitalization ratio. (For more insight, read Can You Count On Goodwill? and The Hidden Value Of Intangibles.)Funded debt is the technical term applied to the portion of a company's long-termdebt that is made up of bonds and other similar long-term, fixed-maturity types of borrowings. No matter how problematic a company's financial condition may be, the holders of these obligations cannot demand payment as long the company pays the interest on its funded debt. In contrast, bank debt is usually subject to acceleration clauses and/or covenants that allow the lender to call its loan. From the investor's perspective, the greater the percentage of funded debt to total debt disclosed in the debt note in the notes to financial statements, the better. Funded debt gives a company more wiggle room. (To read more on financial statement footnotes, see Footnotes: Start Reading The Fine Print.)Lastly, credit ratings are formal risk evaluations by credit-rating agencies - Moody's, Standard & Poor's, Duff & Phelps and Fitch – of a company's ability torepay principal and interest on debt obligations, principally bonds and commercial paper. Here again, this information should appear in the footnotes. Obviously, investors should be glad to see high-quality rankings on the debt of companies they are considering as investment opportunities and be wary of the reverse.ConclusionA company's reasonable, proportional use of debt and equity to support its assets is a key indicator of balance sheet strength. A healthy capital structure that reflects a low level of debt and a corresponding high level of equity is a very positive sign of investment quality.To continue learning about financial statements, read What You Need To Know About Financial Statements and Advanced Financial Statement Analysis.。
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。
外文翻译--资本结构与企业绩效
Capital Structure and Firm Performance1. IntroductionAgency costs represent important problems in corporate governance in both financial and nonfinancialindustries. The separation of ownership and control in a professionally managed firm may result in managersexerting insufficient work effort, indulging in perquisites, choosing inputs or outputs that suit their ownpreferences, or otherwise failing to maximize firm value. In effect, the agency costs of outside ownership equalthe 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 theagency costs hypothesis, high leverage or a low equity/asset ratio reduces the agency costs of outside equity andincreases firm value by constraining or encouraging managers to act more in the interests of shareholders. Sincethe seminal paper by Jensen and Meckling (1976), a vast literature on such agency-theoretic explanations ofcapital structure has developed (see Harris and Raviv 1991 and Myers 2001 for reviews). Greater financialleverage may affect managers and reduce agency costs through the threat of liquidation, which causes personallosses to managers of salaries, reputation, perquisites, etc. (e.g., Grossman and Hart 1982, Williams 1987), andthrough pressure to generate cash flow to pay interest expenses (e.g., Jensen 1986). Higher leverage canmitigate 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 thefirm 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 loweragency costs of outside equity and improved firm performance, all else held equal. However, when leveragebecomes relatively high, further increases generate significant agency costs of outside debt –including higherexpected costs of bankruptcy or financial distress –arising from conflicts between bondholders andshareholders.1 Because it is difficult to distinguish empirically between the two sources of agency costs, wefollow 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 hypothesistypically regress measures of firm performance on the equity capital ratio or other indicator of leverage plussome 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 regulatorycosts associated with very high leverage.First, the measures of firm performance are usually ratios fashioned from financial statements or stockmarket prices, such as industry-adjusted operating margins or stock market returns. These measures do not netout the effects of differences in exogenous market factors that affect firm value, but are beyon d management’scontrol and therefore cannot reflect agency costs. Thus, the tests may be confounded by factors that areunrelated to agency costs. As well, these studies generally do not set a separate benchmark for each firm’sperformance that would be reali zed 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 profitefficiency represents a refinement of the efficiency concept developed since that time.2 Profit efficiencyevaluates how close a firm is to earning the profit that a best-practice firm would earn facing the sameexogenous conditions. This has the benefit of controlling for factors outside the control of management that arenot part of agency costs. In contrast, comparisons of standard financial ratios, stock market returns, and similarmeasures typically do not control for these exogenous factors. Even when the measures used in the literature areindustry adjusted, they may not account for important differences across firms within an industry – such as localmarket conditions – as we are able to do with profit efficiency. In addition, the performance of a best-practicefirm under the same exogenous conditions is a reasonable benchmark for how the firm would be expected toperform if agency costs were minimized.Second, the prior research generally does not take into account the possibility of reverse causation fromperformance to capital structure. If firm performance affects the choice of capital structure, then failure to takethis 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 theeffects of performance on capital structure.We address this problem by allowing for reverse causality from performance to capital structure. Wediscuss below two hypotheses for why firm performance may affect the choice of capital structure, theefficiency-risk hypothesis and the franchise-value hypothesis. We construct a two-equation structural model andestimate it using two-stage least squares (2SLS). An equation specifying profit efficiency as a functi on of the2 Stigler’s argument was part of a broader exchange over whether productive efficiency (or X-efficiency) primarily reflectsdifficulties in reconciling the preferences of multiple optimizing agents –what is today called agency costs –versus “true” inefficiency, or failure to 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 equationspecifying the equity capital ratio as a function of the firm’s profi tefficiency and other variables is used to testthe net effects of the efficiency-risk and franchise-value hypotheses. Both equations are econometricallyidentified 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. Undervirtually any theory of agency costs, ownership structure is important, since it is the separation of ownership andcontrol that creates agency costs (e.g., Barnea, Haugen, and Senbet 1985). Greater insider shares may reduceagency 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 bycreating a relatively efficient monitor of the managers (e.g., Shleifer and Vishny 1986). Exclusion of theownership variables may bias the test results because the ownership variables may be correlated with thedependent 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 equationexplaining 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 qualitydata available on firms in this industry. In particular, we have detailed financial data for a large number of firmsproducing comparable products with similar technologies, and information on market prices and otherexogenous conditions in the local markets in which they operate. In addition, some studies in this literature findevidence 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 otherinfluences on behavior as other industries. The banks in the sample are subject to essentially equal regulatoryconstraints, and we focus on differences across banks, not between banks and other firms. Most banks are wellabove 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 of reversecausation from performance to capital structure, which may result in simultaneous-equations bias. We offer twohypotheses of reverse causation based on violations of the Modigliani-Millerperfect-markets assumption. It isassumed that various market imperfections (e.g., taxes, bankruptcy costs, asymmetric information) result in abalance between those favoring more versus less equity capital, and that differences in profit efficiency move theoptimal equity capital ratio marginally up or down.Under the efficiency-risk hypothesis, more efficient firms choose lower equity ratios than other firms, allelse equal, because higher efficiency reduces the expected costs of bankruptcy and financial distress. Under thishypothesis, higher profit efficiency generates a higher expected return for a given capital structure, and thehigher efficiency substitutes to some degree for equity capital in protecting the firm against future crises. This isa joint hypothesis that i) profit efficiency is strongly positively associated with expected returns, and ii) thehigher 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 stronglypositively associated with expected returns in banking. Profit efficiency has been found to be significantlypositively correlated with returns on equity and returns on assets (e.g., Berger and Mester 1997) and otherevidence suggests that profit efficiency is relatively stable over time (e.g., DeYoung 1997), so that a finding ofhigh 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 substitutedfor equity capital –follows from a standard Altman z-score analysis of firm insolvency (Altman 1968). Highexpected returns and high equity capital ratio can each serve as a buffer against portfolio risks to reduce theprobabilities of incurring the costs of financialdistressbankruptcy, so firms with high expected returns owing tohigh profit efficiency can hold lower equity ratios. The z-score is the number of standard deviations below theexpected 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, andratios for those that were fully owned by a single owner-manager. This may be an improvement in the analysis of agencycosts for small firms, but it does not address our main issues of controlling for differences in exogenous conditions and insetting 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 higherefficiency will have higher μi. Based on the second part of the hypothesis, a higher μi allows the firm to have alower 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 ofFinance.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。
【精品文档】61资本结构和公司绩效:来自约旦的证据中英文双语外文文献翻译成品
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。
