Resumen
The Static Tradeoff and Pecking Order models speci?ed in Shyam-Sunder and Myers (1999) were employed to analyze the ?nancing policies adopted by Brazilian public ?rms. At a ?rst glance, it seems that both models correctly describe the way in which ?rms in the sample ?nance their investments, although the Pecking Order model explains a greater percentage of the time series variance in the debt level. But when the power to reject the alternative hypothesis of each of the two models is considered, we conclude that the adopted policy is actually of the pecking order type. The factors that in?uence the decision to issue debt or equity to ?nance cash de?cits, for the ?rms in the sample, were also studied with the help of two nonlinear probability models of the ?Probit? type. The results show that equity is issued when market conditions are favorable, and not only when there is a substantial risk of default, pointing to a pecking order policy of the ?complex? type.