Financial Statement Comparability and Debt Choice
研究了财务报表可比性如何影响企业债务选择，发现可比性越高，企业越倾向于使用公开债务而非银行贷款，尤其对信息不对称和融资约束高的企业影响更显著。
ABSTRACT This paper investigates whether financial statement comparability influences corporate debt choice (i.e., the use of public and bank debt). Using a panel of U.S.‐listed companies from 2001 to 2018, our sample comprises 14,872 firm‐year observations representing 2412 firms. We find that firms with higher financial statement comparability rely more on public debt financing than on bank debt. This finding remains robust after conducting a series of endogeneity tests and robustness analyses. In the cross‐sectional heterogeneity analyses, we observe that our documented relationship between comparability and public debt financing is more conspicuous for firms facing greater information asymmetries and higher financing constraints. Overall, our study suggests that financial statement comparability has important implications for corporate debt choice.