一、講座主題

 Financial Structure and Oligopoly: The R&D Effect

二、主要內容

Financial structure is an important decision variable for firms, and varies significantly across industries. Capital intensive industries such as manufacturing or utilities, which have substantial physical assets and typically generate stable cash flows, tend to have relatively high debt-equity ratios. In contrast, research intensive industries, such as those in the "high tech" sector, issue much less debt. Conventional wisdom is that financial distress costs are the most important explanatory factor for this variation in financial structure. That is, firms with more uncertain prospects might seek to minimize the chance of financial distress and the associated costs by keeping debt levels low. However, the high-tech giants with very low debt to equity ratios such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, and others do not seem vulnerable to financial distress risk. In this paper, we offer an alternative theory to explain why financial structure varies across industries. We focus on the relationship between financial structure and R&D in an oligopoly context. There are two distinct types of R&D -- process R&D, which lowers the cost of producing a given product, and product R&D, which changes product characteristics and/or improves product quality. Our key insight is that process R&D is complementary with the strategic use of debt to improve a firm's market position under oligopoly. As in Brander and Lewis (1986), firms have an incentive to use debt to commit themselves to a more aggressive position in the output market. Process R&D strengthens this effect. Product R&D, on the other hand, increases product differentiation, weakens head-to-head competition between oligopolistic rivals, and reduces the incentive to use debt for strategic purposes. As manufacturing industries and utilities make relatively more use of process R&D, while high-tech industries undertake relatively more product R&D, we can explain why the high-tech industries make relatively less use of debt and have much lower debt to equity ratios.

三、主講人

Victor Song博士，西藤原信誓旦旦蒙弗雷澤大學Beedie商學院金融和創出租车新與創業領域助理教授，冠亚体育APP重點是公司金融、產業組織和創新，成果ω發表於Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Empirical Finance等頂級金融期□　刊，冠亚体育APP興趣包括公司金融、國際金融、並購和管理目光远眺着距离几百米外經濟學。

四、時間

 2023年11月9日上午11點-12點

五、地點

 中心校區知新樓B336