A New Test of Capital Structure

Colin Mayer () and Oren Sussman

No 4239, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: This Paper reports a new test of capital structure theories. It uses a filtering technique to identify large investment spikes. We find that the spikes are predominantly financed with debt by large firms and by new equity by small loss-making firms. In the process, firms move significantly away from their previous capital structures but then revert back to them by making frequent issues of small amounts of equity. Neither the pecking order nor the trade-off theories on their own provide satisfactory descriptions of these dynamic features of corporate financing.

Keywords: Capital structure; Corporate finance; Pecking order; Trade-off theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cfn
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

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Working Paper: A New Test of Capital Structure (2003)
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