Target Behavior and Financing: How Conclusive Is the Evidence?
质疑企业债务比率目标决定融资行为的证据，通过生成融资与债务比率无关的样本，发现许多支持目标行为的证据可被复制，表明现有检验缺乏效力。
ABSTRACT The notion that firms have a debt ratio target that is a primary determinant of financing behavior is influential in finance. Yet, how definitive is the evidence? We address this issue by generating samples where financing is unrelated to a firm's current debt ratio or a target. We find that much of the available evidence in favor of target behavior based on leverage ratio changes can be reproduced for these samples. Taken together, our findings suggest that a number of existing tests of target behavior have no power to reject alternatives.