The Leverage–Profitability Puzzle Resurrected
动态权衡理论预测杠杆与盈利正相关，但实证发现负相关；本文发现企业在发行债务并将收益分配给股东时，相关性为负，而理论预测此时应为正，从而复活了杠杆-盈利之谜。
Abstract With zero capital structure rebalancing costs, dynamic trade-off theory predicts that firms stay at their leverage targets with more profitable firms staying at higher leverage. This prediction is rejected by the robustly negative correlation between leverage and profitability. When rebalancing costs are added to this theory, it predicts a positive leverage–profitability correlation only in periods where companies pay these costs and actively rebalance their capital structures. However, we show that the correlation is negative when firms issue debt and distribute the proceeds to shareholders—precisely the case where the theory predicts it should be positive. Our results thus resurrect the leverage–profitability puzzle.