On the Relevance of Agency Conflicts in SME Debt Maturity Structure
研究了中小企业中代理冲突对债务期限结构的影响，发现投资不足、资产替代和过度投资问题显著影响债务结构，且结果对变量内生性和截断因变量稳健。
Previous theoretical research asserts that an optimal policy of debt maturity structure mitigates the various agency conflicts that arise through debt contracts. We test this hypothesis on Small and Medium‐Sized Enterprises (), which are very sensitive to agency problems. Such problems mainly arise between owners and debt providers, due to recording high growth and having few fixed assets and informational asymmetry. We provide evidence on the relevant effect of underinvestment, asset substitution, and overinvestment problems on debt structure. Results appear to be robust to both the endogeneity problem of explanatory variables and the censored dependent variable.