Back to the Beginning: Persistence and the Cross‐Section of Corporate Capital Structure
研究发现公司杠杆率的大部分变化由未观测到的、长期稳定的因素驱动，高杠杆和低杠杆公司会保持这种状态超过二十年，这对理解资本结构异质性的实证分析有重要启示。
ABSTRACT We find that the majority of variation in leverage ratios is driven by an unobserved time‐invariant effect that generates surprisingly stable capital structures: High (low) levered firms tend to remain as such for over two decades. This feature of leverage is largely unexplained by previously identified determinants, is robust to firm exit, and is present prior to the IPO, suggesting that variation in capital structures is primarily determined by factors that remain stable for long periods of time. We then show that these results have important implications for empirical analysis attempting to understand capital structure heterogeneity.