Empirical Research On Factors Influencing The Debt Structure In Chinese Listed Companies

Theory of capital structure holds an important position in the enterprises theories. After read most literatures of capital structure, we can find that most of them come from the gross of financing structure. In fact, enterprises debts are different in their debt financing structures. From 1980's , many researchers have engaged in the study what kind of factors influencing debt financing structures,and have come to mainly three hypothesis: agency cost hypothesis, information asymmetry hypothesis and tax hypothesis. However, according to the theory of capital structure, the research on debt financing structure is not enough, and we find it is still a problem worth study. The dissertation researches the factors influencing the debt structure in Chinese listed companies with empirical analysis and standard analysis based on three hypothesis mentioned above.The dissertation first defines the basic concept such as debt maturity structure, debt priority structure and debt placement structure, explains how the debt structure influences debt financing effect, and analyses what kind of factors affect the companies'debt structure based on hypothesis theoretically. Second, the dissertation applies pooled regression and cross-sectional regression to empirically exam the determinants of debt structure of Chinese listed companies. The empirical evidence on factors influencing the debt maturity structure is that asset maturity, enterprise size, debt scale and industry characteristic influence the debt maturity structure in Chinese listed companies, we don't have the specific results about enterprise growth opportunity, abnormal earning, abnormal information, and effective tax rate. The results support the agency cost hypothesis partly, and don't support the information asymmetry hypothesis and the tax hypothesis. The empirical evidence on factors influencing the debt priority structure is that enterprise size and debt scale influence the debt priority structure in Chinese listed companies, we don't have the specific results about enterprise growth opportunity, abnormal earning, abnormal information, effective tax rate and industry characteristic. The results doesn't support the agency cost hypothesis, the information asymmetry hypothesis, nor the tax hypothesis. Finally, policy recommendations are put forward to promote listed corporation to make the correct choice of debt structure in China.