基于企业生命周期的资本结构决策【外文翻译】.doc

　　本科毕业论文（设计） 　　外 文 翻 译 原文 　　Capital Structure Decisions During a Firm’s Life Cycle In one of the most interesting studies on the capital structure of small business,Berger and Udell （1998） asserted that general financial theory is not applicable to allbusinesses. Instead, the particular phase of a business?s life cycle determines thenature of its financial needs, the availability of financial resources, and the relatedcost of capital. This approach supports financial behaviors that are life-cycle-specific. 　　As argued by Kaplan and Stromberg （2003）， the changing degree of informationalopacity that a firm faces drives its financial life cycle. From its inception to maturity,the financial needs of a firm change according to its ability to generate cash, itsgrowth opportunities, and the risk in realizing them. This will be reflected by evolvingf 　　inancing preferences and the nature of the specific financial choices that a firmmakes during its life cycle. As a consequence, firms at the earlier stages of their lifecycles, which arguably tend to have larger levels of asymmetric information, moregrowth opportunities, and reduced size, should have specific capital structure driversand should apply specific financing strategies as they advance through the differentphases of their life cycles. 　　Despite recent attention to this topic, data on the financing structure of firmsduring the course of their life cycles is rather limited, and results are inconclusive（Gregory et al. 2005）。 Thus, we still need to extend our understanding of firms? 　　financial choices in this area, verifying, in particular, the existence of a pro-temporeoptimal capital structure and the drivers that are potentially relevant to explain capitalstructure decisions as the firms progress along the different phases of their life cycle. 　　In some contexts, equity （specifically, venture capital） has been shown to play a rolein the early stages, while debt becomes relevant only in the late stages. In other