Debt, Leases, Taxes, and the Endogeneity of Corporate Tax Status
证明公司税负状态对融资决策具有内生性，导致财务政策指标与常用税收代理变量之间出现虚假关联。使用税前融资边际税率的前瞻估计，发现经营租赁与税率负相关，债务水平与税率正相关，首次明确支持低税率公司租赁更多、债务更少的假说。
We provide evidence that corporate tax status is endogenous to financing decisions, which induces a spurious relation between measures of financial policy and many commonly used tax proxies. Using a forward‐looking estimate of before‐financing corporate marginal tax rates, we document a negative relation between operating leases and tax rates, and a positive relation between debt levels and tax rates. This is the first unambiguous evidence supporting the hypothesis that low tax rate firms lease more, and have lower debt levels, than high tax rate firms.