融资约束与公司投资 FHP_88 简介与分析

PART 1. Outline

MM theory founded the benchmark in corporate finance that firms’financing decision is irrelevant to the investment decision, which relies on the assumption that the market is efficient and frictionless. However, considering the reality of financial market, external financing doesn’t provide a perfect substitute for internal capital. In 1970s, Joseph E. Stiglitz first proved the tax structure has an impact on firms’ financing structure1and came up with the concept of financial constraint.

In 1988’s classic paper, Fazzari, Hubbard and Petersen discussed extra costs of equity financing and debt which caused by capital market imperfections, especially asymmetric information. Via studying the investment behaviours in groups of firms categorised by a ratio of dividends to income, authors attempted to create links between financing constraints and investment varies. Their results supported that the sensitivity of investment to cash flow is a reliable indicator of corporates’ financial constraints. FHP’s researches provided several important perspectives on the topic.

Kaplan and Zingales’s research challenged FHP’s conclusion. Basically, their study shows that high investment-cash flow sensitivity does not necessarily suggest firms are more financially constrained.

Theoretically, even in a one-period model, examining the sensitivities of investment to W (internal funds) and to k (wedge between the internal and external costs of funds), authors could conclude that investment-cash flow sensitivity do not necessarily accord with the extent of financial constraints.

Empirical evidence confirms the nonmonotonic relationship between these two factors.

KZ analysed the 49 firms with abnormally high investment-cash flow sensitivity; by deeply exploring the fundamentals of sample firms (including operating efficiency, liquidity, financial statements and notes to annual reports for each fiscal-year), authors found that almost 40% of them were capable to increase investment in every year of the observing period.

According to qualitative information in the annual reports and quantitative information in the financial statements and notes, KZ classified the 49 observations into five groups (NFC, LNFC, PFC, LFC and FC). Classifications result shows that cash stocks, cash flow, Q, unused lines of credit and interest coverage are monotonically declining from NFC to FC, which supports the validation of classification scheme. Critically, regressions reveal that the NFC firms exhibit the highest investment-cash flow sensitivity (coefficient is statistically greater than that of other firms).

Reexamine validity of the finding: when splitting data into subperiods, the results still hold; 1Stiglitz, Joseph E. "Taxation, corporate financial policy, and the cost of capital." Journal of Public Economics 2.1 (1973): 1-34.