La structure du capital et la profitabilité : le cas des entreprises industrielles françaises : the case of french industrial firms

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. A sample of 1846 French industrial firms are taken over the period 1999-2006, as a dynamic panel study by using the generalized method of moments (GMM). We show that capital structure has no influence on the profitability of French firms, regardless the size of the company. -- Capital structure ; Profitability ; GMM ; panel data