| Debt maturity holds significant position not only in company's financial decision, but also in capital structure study. Debt of different maturity can have great influence on a company's value and investment behavior. Since 1980's, theory of debt maturity have identified many endogenous factors, such as enterprise growth opportunity, free cash flow, asymmetric information and effective tax rate etc. As these endogenous factors can not perfectly interpret debt maturity disparity among different nations, researchers began to extend their attentions to institution and environment analysis. Financial development, as an important part of institutional factors for firms, is anticipated to have impact on debt maturity in this paper.This dissertation first reviews the existing theory of debt maturity and studies on corporate financing disparity. The next chapter presents the function of finance system and the actual situation of Chinese regional financial development. Based on these theories, we reveal the possible associations between financial disparity and corporate debt maturity structure. Our conclusion indicates that growth and character of non-stated-owned finance institutions, especially the imbalance of civil finance exerts great influence on debt maturity. Interventions in financial activities by government, natural relationship between government and corporations and incomplete legislation cause low debt maturity in our country as well.In the sthenia syndrome part, factor analysis method is applied to calculate comprehensive index which reflects regional financial development of our country. Then we analyze the effects of regional financial disparity on corporate debt maturity on the basis of listed company's empirical data. It is found that corporate debt maturity is relatively low in regions with a higher developed finance system. This conclusion signifies that debt maturity structure is not completely related to company's irrational choice behavior, to some extent, it has to comply with the development of regional finance system. Therefore, Chinese listed company holds great proportions of short term debt. This paper also verifies the applicability of existing theory of debt maturity in China. Empirical evidences support the agency cost hypothesis and maturity matching hypothesis. However, the deputy variables of asymmetric information and free cash flow hypothesis can not pass the significance test, which means that Chinese listed companies lay more stress on the contributions of debt maturity structures to reduce agency cost and risks from breaking a contract when they make a financing decision. |
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