Mm Capital Structure by Kouki Mondher

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www.ccsenet.org/ijbm International Journal of Business and Management Vol. 6, No. 10; October 2011 A Re-examination of the MM Capital Structure Irrelevance Theorem: A Partial Payout Approach Kouki Mondher Faculty of Management and Economics Sciences of Tunis, Tunisia Tel: 216-98-543-763 Received: April 11, 2011 doi:10.5539/ijbm.v6n10p193 Abstract Contrary to Modigliani and Miller (1958, MM hereafter), Capital Structure is not irrelevant when we consider a firm with a dividend payout policy. This article extends the MM capital structure theorem by relaxing the full payout assumption and introducing retention policy. The theoretical contribution shows that it is possible to verify the theorem when we suppose an investor who exchanges his initial holding for another portfolio composed of consumption and investment. The empirical analysis of this new approach is based on a data set of the USA Electric Utilities and Oil companies for the period 1990-1998. The results show that the relationships between leverage and firm value are significantly affected by the firm’s payout ratio. This finding is largely inconsistent with MM’s view that the division of a stream between cash dividend and retained earnings is a mere detail in dealing with the irrelevance of capital structure. Keywords: Capital structure, Firm value, Irrelevance theorem, Arbitrage, Payout policy 1. Introduction Miller and Modigliani’s (1958) irrelevance theorem is one of the important and puzzling issues in modern corporate finance theory (note 1), which has challenged the traditional view that an optimum leverage exists. The main source of the puzzle stems from the fact that financial research don’t seem to explain the firm financing behaviour as we attempt to reconcile the MM theory with the evidence(Myers 1984, Gordon and Chamberlin1994, Rajan and Zingales1995). The MM theorem(proposition I) has

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