Thursday, June 24, 2004

SSRN-Revealed Preferences for Corporate Leverage by Thomas Philippon

SSRN-Revealed Preferences for Corporate Leverage by Thomas Philippon

WOW!!! A must read! Philippon examines firms' capital structure empirically and theortically. He finds that firm value does not exactly fit the static trade-off model. Specifically he finds that low levels of debt are not accompanied by as low of firm values as would be expected. However, in other areas, what we have been teaching seems exactly right: more growth options means less debt, highly profitable firms do have higher target debt ratios (even though they may not all be the targets), and expected future financing deficits makes financial slack more valuable. Interestingly, he also finds some evidence that managerial power (as proxied by CEO tenure) is assocaited with lower levels of debt. READ IT!!! :)

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