金融专业外文翻译-----资本结构决定因素以中国企业为案例-金融财政(编辑修改稿)

金融专业外文翻译-----资本结构决定因素以中国企业为案例-金融财政(编辑修改稿)内容摘要：

es equityholders an incentive to invest suboptimally. More specifically the debt contract provides that, if an investment yields large returns well above the face value of the debt, equityholders will capture most of the gain. If, however, the investment fails, debtholders bear the consequences because of limited liability. As a result, equityholders may benefit from „going for broke‟。 . investing in very risky projects, even if they are valuedecreasing. Such investments result in a decrease in the value of the debt. The loss in value of the equity from the poor investment can be more than offset by the gain in equity value captured at the expense of debtholders. Equityholders correctly anticipate equityholders‟ future behavior. In this case, the debtholders receive less for the debt than they otherwise would. Thus, the cost of the incentive to invest in valuedecreasing projects created by debt is borne by the equityholders who issue the debt. This effect, generally called the asset substitution effect, is the agency cost of debt financing. On the other hand, conflicts between shareholders and managers arise because managers hold less than 100% of the residual claim. Consequently, they do not bear the entire cost of these activities. Managers may thus invest less effort in managing the firm‟s resources, and may be able to transfer firm resources to their own personal benefit, for example through „empirebuilding‟ or by consuming „perquisites‟ such as corporate jets, luxurious offices etc. The manager bears the entire cost of refraining from these activities, but captures only a fraction of the gain. As a result, managers overindulge in these pursuits relative to the level that would maximize firm value. This ineffciency is reduced the larger is the fraction of the firm‟s equity owned by the manager. Holding constant the manager‟s absolute investment in the firm, an increase in the debt ratio of the firm increases the manager‟s share of the equity and mitigates the loss from the conflict between the manager and shareholders. Moreover, as pointed out by Jensen (1986), since debt mits the firm to pay out cash, it reduces the amount of „free‟ cash available to managers to engage in the types of pursuits mentioned above. This mitigation of the conflicts between managers and equityholders constitutes a benefit of debt financing. A number of implications follow from this analysis. First, one wouldexpect bond contracts to include features that attempt to prevent asset substitution, such as interest coverage requirements, prohibitions against investments in new unrelated lines of business, etc. Second, industries in which the opportunities for asset substitution are more limited will have higher debt levels ceteris paribus. Thus, for example, the theory predicts that regulated public utilities, banks, and firms in mature industries with few growth opportunities will be more highly leveraged. Third, it is optimal for firms with slow or even negative growth, and that have large free cash in flows from operations, to have more debt. Large free cash flows without good investment prospects create the resources to consume perquisites, build empires, overpay subordinates etc. Increasing debt reduces the amount of „free cash‟ and increases the manager‟s fractional ownership of the residual claim. According to Jensen (1。