公司金融具體的研究方向:主要是從公司治理的角度去分析,也就是相關利益者之間的各種關系,比如股東與管理者之間的代理問題,股東與債權人的關系,大股東(控股股東)與小股東之間的關系。從個利益相關者的利益權衡中去分析公司的資本結構、股利政策、現金持有等問題。另外還有學者從法與制度(公司外部環境)去分析公司金融的東西。公司金融的主要課題是,以下以一份公司金融博士課程安排為例:Financial policy: General theories
1. Fisher Separation Theorem; Modigliani-Miller propositions; trade-off theory of capital structure
2. Basic agency ideas: Debt as a disciplining device; indirect costs of debt financing (risk-shifting, debt overhang)
3. Asymmetric information: Debt signaling; signaling with inside equity; financing investment under asymmetric information
4. Security design approach to capital structureFinancial policy: Empirical approaches to general theories
5. Capital structure: Determinants; trade-off versus pecking order; market timing, inertia; dynamic models
6. Financing constraints: Investment-cash flow sensitivityFurther topics (theory and/or empirics):7. Instry equilibrium:
- Liquidation values of specialized assets: Shleifer and Vishny (1992), Pulvino (1998)
- Equity holder – debt holder conflicts: Maksimovic and Zechner (1991)
- Empirical facts: Almazan and Molina (2005)
8. Efficiency of multi-divisional firms: Internal capital markets theories and the diversification discount
- Stein (1997), Scharfstein and Stein (2000), Rajan, Servaes, and Zingales (2000)
- Schoar (2002), Maksimovic and Phillips (2002), Chevalier (2004), Graham, Lemmon, and Wolf (2002), others
9. Initial public offerings: Puzzles, theories, current research
10. Financial intermediation; Costs and benefits of informed finance: Rajan (1992)
11. Lending channel and supply-side effects in corporate financing: Holmstrom and Tirole (1997)12. Information from stock prices to cash flows
13. Stock market and managerial incentives: Earnings manipulation
14. Labor market and managerial incentives: Herding
15. Investor protection, international corporate finance 現在一部分前沿的公司金融研究是和資產定價以及宏觀經濟學聯系在一起的: 比如研究公司融資與資產價格的關系,比如研究在商業周期波動中公司融資模式的變動等等,以及流動性問題的宏觀影響。當然這些領域也不是現在才開始的,但直到最近仍然有重要的文章出現。