The DOI matches its Crossref record.
A Theory of Optimal Capital Structure
Abstract
This paper presents a multiperiod model of firm valuation derived under the assumptions that bankruptcy is possible and that secondary markets for assets are imperfect. Given the assumption that the probability of bankruptcy is zero, the model is formally identical to that proposed by Modigliani and Miller. Under plausible conditions the model implies a unique optimal capital structure. Comparative statics analysis is used to obtain a number of testable hypotheses which specify the parameters on which optimal financial policy depends. Implications for the debt policy of the regulated firm are also considered.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cited by
A Cash Conversion Cycle Approach to Liquidity Analysis
Richards, V. D., & Laughlin, E. J. (1980) · Financial Management · doi:10.2307/3665310 · Cited by 628
Why Do Firms Use Private Equity to Opt Out of Public Markets?
Bharath, S. T., & Dittmar, A. K. (2010) · Review of Financial Studies · doi:10.1093/rfs/hhq016 · Cited by 247
Metadata
- Authors
- Scott, J. H.
- Venue
- The Bell Journal of Economics
- Publisher
- JSTOR
- Published
- 1976
- Volume
- 7
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 33
- ISSN
- 0361-915X (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1529779377
- Cited by
- 664
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 88.22
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: A Theory of Optimal Capital Structure. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.2307/3003189
- The paper
- Scott, J. H. (1976). A Theory of Optimal Capital Structure. The Bell Journal of Economics. https://doi.org/10.2307/3003189
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
