Capital Structure Choice When Managers are in Control: Entrenchment Versus Efficiency
University of Chicago - Booth School of Business; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); University of Chicago - Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship; European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI)
Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) - Department of Economics
NBER Working Paper No. w5384
Recent capital structure theories have emphasized the role of debt in minimizing the agency costs that arise from the separation between ownership and control. In this paper we argue that capital structure choices themselves are affected by the same agency problem. We show that, in general, the shareholders' and the manager's capital structure choices differ not only in their levels, but also in their sensitivities to the cost of financial distress and taxes. We argue that only the managerial perspective can explain why firms are generally reluctant to issue equity, why they issue it only following a stock price run-up, and why Corporate America recently deleveraged under the same tax system that supposedly generated the increase in leverage in the 1980s.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 42
Date posted: July 9, 1998
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