Incompatible with standard capital structure theories, zero-leverage (ZL) firms are becoming increasingly common in recent decades. In this study, we examine whether shareholders consider a firm’s ZL policy value-enhancing or value-reducing. Using Faulkender and Wang’s (2006) methodology, we find that shareholders place a positive value on the event of a firm switching to zero debt. Furthermore, this valuation is not affected by whether the firm faces a managerial entrenchment problem, but is affected significantly by whether it is financially constrained before becoming debt-free. We find that shareholders place no value on a financially constrained firm following a ZL policy, but place a positive value on an unconstrained firm doing so, indicating that they only consider the latter as a value-enhancing policy. We also show that our finding still holds even when conducting an event study with short-term event windows. We infer that shareholders’ positive valuation on financially unconstrained firms is related to the financial flexibility of ZL policies.

与标准资本结构理论不相容的是，近几十年来，零杠杆（ZL）公司变得越来越普遍。在本研究中，我们研究股东是否认为公司的 ZL 政策会增加价值或减少价值。使用 Faulkender 和 Wang（2006）的方法，我们发现股东对公司转向零债务的事件给予积极的评价。此外，这一估值不受公司是否面临管理巩固问题的影响，但在很大程度上受到公司在摆脱债务之前是否受到财务约束的影响。我们发现，股东对遵循 ZL 政策的财务受限的公司没有任何价值，但对这样做的不受约束的公司给予积极的评价，这表明他们只认为后者是一项增值政策。我们还表明，即使在使用短期事件窗口进行事件研究时，我们的发现仍然成立。我们推断，股东对财务不受约束的公司的积极评价与 ZL 政策的财务灵活性有关。