A Theory of Capital Structure Relevance under Imperfect Information
研究企业在完美竞争资本市场中融资时，内部人拥有信息优势而外部资本提供者不知情，如何通过设计债务与权益的混合来消除内部人的逆向激励并正确定价证券，发现债务量与不可观测的真实价值单调相关。
ABSTRACT Firms raise debt and equity capital to finance a positive net present value project in perfectly competitive capital markets; firm insiders know the function generating the random firm cash flow but potential capital suppliers do not. Taking into account the incentives of insiders to misrepresent their firm type, capital suppliers attempt to design financing mixes of debt and equity that eliminate the adverse incentives of insiders and correctly price securities. Necessary conditions for a costless separating equilibrium are developed to show that the amount of debt used by a firm is monotonically related to its unobservable true value.