外文翻译--公司的股权结构、公司治理和资本结构决策——来自加纳的实证研究

外文翻译--公司的股权结构、公司治理和资本结构决策—

—来自加纳的实证研究

本科毕业论文(设计)

文翻译外

原文:

Ownership structure, corporate governance and capital structure

decisions of firms

Empirical evidence from Ghana

1. Introduction

The relevance of capital structure to firm value remains fairly established following the seminal article by Modigliani and Miller, 1958 (Grabowski and Mueller, 1972; McCabe, 1979; Anderson and Reeb, 2003). Several theories including the pecking order theory, the free cash flow, the capital signaling, the trade-off, and market timing theories (windows of opportunities) and the fact that capital structure is voluntarily chosen by managers (Zwiebel, 1996) have been propounded to explain the choice of capital structure. Also, considerable research attention has been paid to the impact of agency costs on corporate financing since Jensen and Meckling (1976) published their paper.

Crutchley and Hansen (1989) maintain that managers’ choice of stock ownership

in the firm, the firm’s mixture of outside debt and equity financing, and dividends are

meant to reduce the costs of agency conflicts. Bajaj et al. (1998) suggest that ownership is positively correlated with various measures of the debt-equity ratio (leverage), implying that ownership structure has a correlation with financial structure of firms (Kim and Sorensen, 1986; Mehran, 1992; Brailsford et al., 2002). Friend and Lang (1988) find that debt ratio is negatively related to managerial ownership. Brailsford et al. (2002) suggest that the relationship between managerial share ownership and leverage may in fact be inverted u-shaped.

In addition, Berglo?f (1990) suggests that in countries in which firms are typically closely held, debt finance plays a more prominent role than in countries characterized by more dispersed ownership structures suggesting the impact of insider system of corporate governance on financing structure of firms. Thomsen and Pedersen (2000) report empirical evidence supporting the hypothesis that the identity of large owners –

family, bank, and institutional investors – has important implications for financial

structure. In particular, they show that a more risk averse or a more patient entrepreneur issues less debt and more equity. Given that insider system of corporate governance is practiced among listed companies in Ghana (Bokpin, 2008), this study seeks to document the impact of ownership structure on corporate financing, a mark departure from Abor (2007).

Claessens et al. (2002) maintain that better corporate governance frameworks benefit firms through greater access to financing, lower cost of capital, better performance and more favourable treatment of all stakeholders. Corporate governance affects the development and

functioning of capital markets and exerts a strong influence on resource allocation. Corporate governance correlates with the financing decisions and the capital structure of firms (Graham and Harvey, 2001; Litov, 2005; Abor, 2007). However, management incentives that include stock options introduces issues for the alignment of managerial and shareholder interests. The question is which way does managerial ownership affect capital structure decisions of firms? How does the form of governance affect the choice of financing? The empirical evidence observed in the literature is inconclusive with much focus on developed capital markets.

Unlike Abor (2007), this present study considers a much broader corporate governance index of the impact of ownership structure, managerial share ownership and other corporate governance variables on capital structure decisions of firms on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE). Earlier studies on the GSE have failed to consider the impact of these factors on corporate financing decisions of firms (Aboagye, 1996; Boateng, 2004; Abor and Biekpe, 2005; Abor, 2007) implying that, these studies invariably ignores a gamut of other relevant variables that are central to understanding

the relationship among ownership structure, corporate governance,

and firms’