外文文献The Important Of Financial RiskSohnke M. Bartram Gregory W. Brown and Murat AtamerAbstract:This paper examines the determinants of equity price risk for a largesample of non-financial corporations in the United States from 1964 to 2008. Weestimate both structural and reduced form models to examine the endogenous natureof corporate financial characteristics such as total debt debt maturity cash holdingsand dividend policy. We find that the observed levels of equity price risk areexplained primarily by operating and asset characteristics such as firm age size assettangibility as well as operating cash flow levels and volatility. In contrast impliedmeasures of financial risk are generally low and more stable than debt-to-equity ratios.Our measures of financial risk have declined over the last 30 years even as measuresof equity volatility e.g. idiosyncratic risk have tended to increase. Consequentlydocumented trends in equity price risk are more than fully accounted for by trends inthe riskiness of firms assets. Taken together the results suggest that the typical U.S.firm substantially reduces financial risk by carefully managing financial policies. As aresult residual financial risk now appears negligible relative to underlying economicrisk for a typical non-financial firm.Keywords：Capital structure； financial risk； risk management；corporate finance1 1. Introduction The financial crisis of 2008 has brought significant attention to the effects offinancial leverage. There is no doubt that the high levels of debt financing by financialinstitutions and households significantly contributed to the crisis. Indeed evidenceindicates that excessive leverage orchestrated by major global banks e.g. through themortgage lending and collateralized debt obligations and the so-called “shadowbanking system” may be the underlying cause of the recent economic and financialdislocation. Less obvious is the role of financial leverage among nonfinancial firms.To date problems in the U.S. non-financial sector have been minor compared to thedistress in the financial sector despite the seizing of capital markets during the crisis.For example non-financial bankruptcies have been limited given that the economicdecline is the largest since the great depression of the 1930s. In fact bankruptcyfilings of non-financial firms have occurred mostly in U.S. industries e.g.automotive manufacturing newspapers and real estate that faced fundamentaleconomic pressures prior to the financial crisis. This surprising fact begs the question“How important is financial risk for non-financial firms” At the heart of this issue isthe uncertainty about the determinants of total firm risk as well as components of firmrisk. Recent academic research in both asset pricing and corporate finance hasrekindled an interest in analyzing equity price risk. A current strand of the assetpricing literature examines the finding of Campbell et al. 2001 that firm-specificidiosyncratic risk has tended to increase over the last 40 years. Other work suggeststhat idiosyncratic risk may be a priced risk factor see Goyal and Santa-Clara 2003among others. Also related to these studies is work by Pstor and Veronesi 2003showing how investor uncertainty about firm profitability is an important determinantof idiosyncratic risk and firm value. Other research has examined the role of equityvolatility in bond pricing e.g. Dichev 1998 Campbell Hilscher and Szilagyi2008. However much of the empirical work examining equity price risk takes the riskof assets as given or tries to explain the trend in idiosyncratic risk. In contrast thispaper takes a different tack in the investigation of equity price risk. First we seek tounderstand the determinants of equity price risk at the firm level by considering totalrisk as the product of risks inherent in the firms operations i.e. economic or businessrisks and risks associated with financing the firms operations i.e. financial risks.Second we attempt to assess the relative importance of economic and financial risksand the implications for financial policy. Early research by Modigliani and Miller 1958 suggests that financial policymay be largely irrelevant for firm value because investors can replicate manyfinancial decisions by the firm at a low cost i.e. via homemade leverage andwell-functioning capital markets should be able to distinguish between financial andeconomic distress. Nonetheless financial policies such as adding debt to the capitalstructure can magnify the risk of equity. In contrast recent research on corporate riskmanagement suggests that firms may also be able to reduce risks and increase valuewith financial policies such as hedging with financial derivatives. However thisresearch is often motivated by substantial deadweight costs associated with financialdistress or other market imperfections associated with financial leverage. Empiricalresearch provides conflicting accounts of how costly financial distress c