Capital Structure Decisions: Which Factors Are Reliably Important?
分析了1950至2003年美国上市公司资本结构决策中多个因素的相对重要性，发现行业杠杆中位数、市值账面比、有形资产比例、利润、资产规模和预期通胀是解释市场杠杆的最可靠因素，股息支付公司杠杆较低。
This paper examines the relative importance of many factors in the capital structure decisions of publicly traded American firms from 1950 to 2003. The most reliable factors for explaining market leverage are: median industry leverage (+ effect on leverage), market‐to‐book assets ratio (−), tangibility (+), profits (−), log of assets (+), and expected inflation (+). In addition, we find that dividend‐paying firms tend to have lower leverage. When considering book leverage, somewhat similar effects are found. However, for book leverage, the impact of firm size, the market‐to‐book ratio, and the effect of inflation are not reliable. The empirical evidence seems reasonably consistent with some versions of the trade‐off theory of capital structure.