La structure du capital et la profitabilité Une étude empirique sur données de panel françaises

The objective of this article is to analyze the impact of capital structure on profitability. This impact can be explained by three essential theories: signaling theory, tax theory and the agency costs theory. From a sample of 9136 firms distributed on seven sectors taken over the period 1999-2006 by means of a study on dynamic panel by using the generalized method of moments (GMM), we show that there exists heterogeneity of behavior between sectors regarding the impact of capital structure on profitability. The empirical analysis allowed us to distinguish three different groups of sectors: for the first group (industry, energy and service), the capital structure has no impact on profitability. The second group, containing only the transport sector, is the group where the debt affects negatively the profitability in a linear way. The last group (agro-food, construction and trade) is characterized by the presence of a negative effect in a linear and nonlinear way.