公司融資決策與高階經理人過度自信之關聯性分析

Abstract

目前有許多文獻在討論造成不同融資決策的決定性因子，然而在考慮稅、破產成本以及資訊不對稱等多項因素之後，發現有類似基礎的公司卻未必會有相同的融資決策，為了解釋這樣的差異，近來有學者提出管理者的信念可能是造成舉債保守及融資順位理論的重要因素。藉由高階經理人是否持有過度深價內之股票選擇權做為衡量過度自信之標準，我們測試了過度自信的高階經理人是否未充分利用舉債所帶來的稅盾，同時也測試高估未來公司現金流的過度自信高階經理人是否會偏好優先使用內部資金，而後舉債最後才是發行新股。我們的實證結果指出，過度自信的高階經理人未必會表現出舉債保守模式，同時舉債較為保守的過度自信高階經理人也未必會發行較少的新股。而當公司出現資金缺口必須向外融資時，我們發現不論是過度自信或是理性的高階經理人都會遵循融資順位理論的行為模式，但我們發現就發行新股與舉債的比例而言，過度自信的高階經理人比起理性高階經理人有較高發行新股的頻率及可能性；然而若以發行金額來看，我們發現過度自信的高階經理人比理性高階經理人平均而言會多舉約0.17元的債來彌補每一塊錢的資金短缺。

The determinants of financing policies have been extensively discussed in financial literatures. However, even companies with similar fundamentals have different choices of financing policies after considering the taxes, bankruptcy costs, and asymmetric information. To explain the residual variation in debt conservatism and pecking order theory, recent literatures propose that managerial beliefs may be one of the crucial factors. By using the late option exercise of CEOs as a measure of overconfidence, we test if overconfident CEOs underutilize debt. We also test if overconfident CEOs who overestimate future cash flow will prefer internal financing over debt and then over equity. Our empirical results indicate that, overconfidence may not necessarily result in debt conservatism, and overconfident CEOs issue who are more debt conservative may not issue less equity. Conditional on accessing external capital markets, both overconfident and rational CEOs follow the pattern of pecking order theory, but overconfident CEOs issue equity more frequently than rational CEOs. However, overconfident CEOs raise on average 17 cents more debt to cover an additional dollar of financing deficit than other CEOs.