Risk‐Shifting Incentives and Signalling Through Corporate Capital Structure
研究信息不对称下公司最优融资安排，分析代理问题、信号问题及两者结合时的均衡，发现资本结构选择偏离代理成本最小化以传递内部人信息，并引发投资政策中的风险转移激励。
ABSTRACT This paper examines optimal corporate financing arrangements under asymmetric information for different patterns of temporal resolution of uncertainty in the underlying technology. An agency problem, a signalling problem and an agency‐signalling problem arise as special cases. The associated informational equilibria and the optimal financing arrangements are characterized and compared. In the agency‐signalling equilibrium the private information of corporate insiders at the time of financing is signalled through capital structure choices which deviate optimally from agency‐cost minimizing financing arrangements, which in turn induce risk‐shifting incentives in the investment policy. In the pure signalling case the equilibrium is characterized by direct contractual precommitments to implement investment policies which are riskier than pareto‐optimal levels. Empirical implications for debt covenants and the announcement effect of investment policies and leverage increasing transactions on existing stock and bond prices are explicitly derived.