This review evaluates the four major theories of corporate financing: (1) the Modigliani–Miller theory of capital-structure irrelevance, in which firm values and real investment decisions are unaffected by financing; (2) the trade-off theory, in which firms balance the tax advantages of...

We analyze the life-cycle patterns of a firm's financing decisions and their interaction with future growth and development decisions. The framework derives three different financing sequences (debt-debt, equity-debt, equity-equity financing) which we link to existing empirical research....