新冠肺炎疫情冲击下的企业资本结构与最优杠杆率研究——基于中国上市公司的经验证据

Study on the Capital Structure and the Optimal Leverage Ratio of Enterprise Under the Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic: Empirical Evidence Based on China’s Listed Companies

文章研究了2019年新型冠状病毒肺炎疫情冲击对中国沪深上市公司资本结构和最优杠杆水平的影响。研究结果显示,疫情冲击具有显著的去杠杆效应,整体来看,上市公司杠杆率比疫情前平均下降了4.2个百分点,同时债务期限温和地延长了。并且这种去杠杆效应在那些面临债务展期风险的公司表现更为明显,而那些经营活动严重依赖社交距离的公司并没有降低其杠杆率。研究中,还基于企业价值最大化视角,设计了一个结构化的公司最优杠杆模型,经实证检验发现,随着疫情冲击所带来的企业预期增长率下降、现金流波动性增加等情形,上市企业主动降低了其最优杠杆水平。

This paper studies the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 on the capital structure and the optimal leverage ratio of China’s listed companies in both Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets. The results show that the impact of the pandemic has significant deleverage effect. In general, the leverage ratio of the listed companies in China fell by 4.2 percentage points in average compared with the pre-pandemic period, while debt maturities were modestly extended. The deleverage effect is more significant in companies with debt rollover risk, while the deleverage ratio in companies whose businesses rely heavily on social distance were not reduced. What’s more, a structured optimal leverage model is designed from the perspective of corporate value maximization. Empirical test shows that the listed companies have lowered their optimal leverage level with the decrease of enterprise expected growth rate and the increasing volatility of cash flow brought by the pandemic.