Real Flexibility and Financial Structure: An Empirical Analysis
实证检验了企业生产灵活性和投资灵活性对债务融资能力的不同影响，发现生产灵活性降低杠杆率而投资灵活性提高杠杆率，对理解企业财务决策有参考价值。
I examine the empirical relation between real flexibility and financial structure. I test whether real flexibility increases debt capacity by lowering default risk and making assets more marketable or decreases debt capacity by facilitating risk shifting and asset substitution. I measure real flexibility as the sensitivity of marginal production and investment decisions to variations in the economic environment. I find that financial leverage is negatively related to production flexibility but positively related to investment flexibility. This split in results suggests that although asset substitution facilitated by investment flexibility can be prevented contractually, risk shifting facilitated by production flexibility is intractable. Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.