Research On The Influence Of Economic Policy Uncertainty On The Adjustment Of Capital Structure Of Listed Companies

The Central Economic Work Conference has repeatedly emphasized that maintaining a reasonable macro leverage is crucial to promoting the smooth operation of the macro economy and preventing macro financial risks.For micro companies,the essence of stable leverage is the reasonable adjustment of capital structure.The adjustment of corporate capital structure has not only been widely concerned by academic circles,but also paid more and more attention to the rationality of its own capital structure for long-term development.Corporate capital structure adjustment behavior is often affected by its own characteristics and macroeconomic,institutional and many other external factors.The formulation and introduction of economic policies are often accompanied by uncertainty.On the one hand,new economic policies are new information to the market,which will produce uncertainty when they are adapted to the market.On the other hand,the change of economic policy due to the time difference and the problem of asymmetric information also produces uncertainty,exacerbating the fluctuation of macroeconomic environment and the capital market,thus influence on the microscopic decision-making in the management of the firm,and the corporate capital structure adjustment behavior as a vital part of the corporate day-to-day business activities.Therefore,it is necessary to study the impact of economic policy uncertainty on capital structure adjustment for the corporate sustainable development and stable macroeconomic growth.Based on the theoretical analysis,this paper expands the traditional partial adjustment model of dynamic capital structure by considering the asymmetric characteristics of the adjustment speed of corporate capital structure.The data of Ashare listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets from 2011 to 2020 and the Economic Policy Uncertainty Index of China compiled by Davis in 2019 are selected as research samples to test the research hypotheses with the help of empirical analysis.The results show that:(1)Economic policy uncertainty will accelerate the downward adjustment of capital structure and inhibit the upward adjustment of capital structure.(2)Financial elasticity and financial friction mechanisms have a significant mediating effect.When rising economic policy uncertainty,the company will improve the flexible financial reserves,then down the speed of adjustment,capital structure and capital structure adjustment speed up slow,in addition the corporate debt financing costs will increase,will also make capital structure adjusted upward at a slower pace,but the effect on downward adjustment speed is not significant.(3)Combined with the background research of current economic transformation,it is found that with the acceleration of the marketization process,the in-depth implementation of property rights reform measures and the improvement of the degree of opening to the outside world,the impact of economic policy uncertainty on the speed of capital structure adjustment will be weakened.