不完全竞争、破产与企业资本结构选择

Incomplete Competition, Bankruptcy and the Choice of Business Capital Structure

不完全竞争条件下破产或破产的可能性对企业资本结构的选择有着重要的影响。破产延缓了企业在下一阶段的投资决策,这种延缓本身的成本并不很高,但由于产品市场是不完全竞争的,因而这种延缓使得破产企业在市场竞争中处于一种策略劣势。企业间最终的均衡结果取决于破产企业固定生产成本的高低:如果固定生产成本较低,那么产品市场上相互竞争的企业之间采用相同的策略,最终的均衡结果是对称的;反之相互竞争的企业之间采取不同的策略———一家企业寻求债权的税收优惠,另一家企业寻求股权的策略效应,最终的均衡结果是不对称的,这也解释了为什么同一个行业中相似的企业之间资本结构有很大的不同。

Current theories about business capital structure ignore the effect of the product market characteristics. So they seem to be difficult to satisfactorily explain the following empirical evidence. First, according to current theories, when a business needs external funds to finance its project, it prefers debt financing. However, based on observations and statistical analysis, we find that many firms in different industries are financially conservative and their debt ratios are significantly lower than theoretical prediction. For example, Graham(2000)made a survey of the managers of 345 American firms and found that most of them are financially conservative. Secondly, similar firms in the same industry have significantly different capital structures. According to modern capital structure theories, the main factors that influence one firm's capital structure are economic environment, industrial characteristic and the firm's own traits. So firms in the same country and industry should have similar capital structure. But empirical researches of Van der Wijst (1989), Riding, Haines & Thomas (1994) had opposite conclusions.Bankruptcy or the probability of bankruptcy is very important to a firm's choice of capital structure when the product market is incomplete competitive. The increase of the firm's debt adds its bankruptcy probability and the effect of bankruptcy is to delay the firms' investment decision. Given the incomplete competition in product market, this delay, which is not costly in itself, means that the bankrupt firm is at a strategic disadvantage in the product market. When the firm's fixed cost of capacity is large, the firm has to be liquidated, which is costly to the firm. So when making its capital structure decisions, the firm must trade off the tax advantage of debt and this special bankruptcy cost, which explains why firms paying heavy corporate taxes use only a small amount of debt. The final equilibrium is also subject to the bankrupt firm's fixed cost of capacity. If the fixed cost of capacity is small, competitive firms adopt the same strategy and the equilibrium is symmetric. If it is large, the equilibrium is asymmetric. One firm pursues the tax benefit of debt and the other pursues the strategic effect of equity. This explains why similar firms in the same industry may have very different capital structure.