This study examines the different characteristics of adopting private debt, corporate bonds, and bank debt in the Taiwanese listed companies that obtained new debt financing from 2002 to 2004. The Logistic Regression Model is performed to find out the main determinants to affect the choice of debt instruments, and Two-Stage Least Squares is used to examine the effects of different debt instrument on equity risk. The results are as followed: 1. The higher the flotation cost the higher the possibility of the firm to choose issuing public bonds. On the other hand, the lower the flotation cost the higher the possibility of the firm to choose issuing private debt. 2. Firms with the highest information asymmetry tend to borrow from banks, and those with the lowest information asymmetry are likely to issue public bonds. 3. Firms with the highest credit quality exhibit a strong preference for public bonds, firms with middle credit quality prefer to borrow from banks, and the lowest credit quality prefer to borrow from private debt sources. 4. Firms with the lowest managerial ownership tend to borrow from private debt. 5. As to the equity risk from the debt sources, it increases with the size of the corporate bonds or private debt, and decreases with the size of the bank debt.

Master of Agribusiness / Department of Agricultural Economics / Allen M. Featherstone / Institutions of the Farm Credit System (FCS) focus on risk-based lending in accordance with regulatory direction. The rating of risk also assists retail staff in loan approval, risk-based pricing, and allowance decisions. FCS institutions have developed models to analyze financial and related customer information in determining qualitative and quantitative risk measures. The objective of this thesis is to examine empirical account data from 2006-2012 to review the probability of default (PD) rating methodology within the overall risk rating system implemented by a Farm Credit System association. This analysis provides insight into the effectiveness of this methodology in predicting the migration of accounts across the association’s currently-established PD ratings where negative migration may be an apparent precursor to actual loan default. The analysis indicates that average PD ratings hold relatively consistent over the years, though the distribution of the majority of PD ratings shifted to higher quality by two rating categories over the time period. Various regressions run in the analysis indicate that the debt to asset ratio is most consistently statistically significant in estimating future PD ratings. The current ratio appears to be superior to working capital to gross profit as a liquidity measure in predicting PD rating migration. Funded debt to EBITDA is more effective in predicting PD rating movement as a measure of earnings to debt than gross profit to total liabilities, although the change of these ratios over time appear to be weaker indicators of the change in PD rating potentially due to the variable nature of annual earnings of production agriculture operations due to commodity price volatility. The debt coverage ratio is important as it relates to future PD migration, though the same variability in commodity price volatility suggests the need implement multi-year averaging for calculation of earnings-based ratios. These ratios were important in predicting the PD rating of observations one year into the future for production agriculture operations. To further test the predictive ability of the PD ratings, similar regression analyses were completed comparing current year rating and ratios to future PD ratings beyond one year, specifically for three and five years. Results from these regression models indicate that current year PD rating and ratios are less effective in predicting future PD ratings beyond one year. Furthermore, because of the variation in regression results between the analyses completed for one, three and five years into the future, it is important to regularly capture ratio and rating information, at least annually.

現今世界的經濟自由化、金融自由化及國際化潮流，為世界經濟注入一泉活水。然而，人們卻也為這種高度流動性以及蓬勃的經濟成長付出了慘痛代價。金融危機對經濟的影響與重要性，以及對金融業尤其是銀行有著極其深遠的影響。而關係著銀行經營之成敗，也是銀行業務中最重要的授信政策，毫無疑問更是金融銀行業經營的重心、開發各項業務的基礎。因此，如何在金融危機發生時維持良好的授信品質，成為銀行業不可或缺的首要課題之一。 本文利用文獻分析、問卷設計之量化研究、深度訪談之質化研究等方法來分析「金融危機下，銀行如何透過授信政策來改善授信品質」、「以合作金庫為例，合庫採取哪些授信政策來改善授信品質」以及「合作金庫之授信政策，是否能有效改善授信品質」等研究問題，並以合作金庫在全球金融危機(2007-2009年)下，授信政策的有效性進行探討。 本文研究發現，合作金庫在全球金融危機(2007-2009年)之授信政策，以「協助經營艱困企業的紓困政策」最為有效，「風險控管」、「區域授信中心」等其他相關政策也頗具效果，惟「緊縮性放款政策」的成效不彰。研究也發現，授信政策有效性會受到地區性、年資與職稱的影響而有不同的結果。且全球金融危機(2007-2009年)政策的制定深深受到亞洲金融危機(1997-1998年)政策成效與評價的影響。因此本文有以下幾項建議： 一、 有關當局可記取前幾次金融危機的教訓，作為制定授信政策的參考依據，並將政策方向指向改善金融體系或銀行的體質。 二、 銀行與企業經營要良性循環、共體時艱且合作並存。 三、 在考量政策實行的同時，也須以不同地區、年資與職稱的授信員工託付不同性質的授信政策去執行，才能「因地制宜、適才適用」。 / Nowadays, the rise of liberalization of world economic, financial and international trend plays the role of pouring living water into the world economy. However, people suffer from the exorbitant cost caused by the high liquidity and robust economic growth simultaneously. The significance and impact of global financial crisis, especially on financial and banking activities is absolutely crucial. Moreover, credit policies not only determine success or failure in banking, but undoubtedly is the core of financial management as well as the foundation of banking affair. Therefore, maintaining high credit quality under financial crisis has become the most essential issue for the banking system. In this thesis, literature analysis, quantitative questionnaire design and qualitative in-depth interview have been applied to analyze the following questions including “How do banks improve credit quality through credit policies facing financial crisis ?” ,“In the case of Taiwan Cooperative Bank, what kind of credit policies has it adopted to improve credit quality ?”Are these credit policies of Taiwan Cooperative Bank feasible and sufficient to improve credit quality? ”Also, the effectiveness of credit policies of Taiwan Cooperative Bank during global financial crisis (2007-2009) will be discussed. This study discovers that the most effective credit policy of Taiwan Cooperative Bank during global financial crisis (2007-2009) is “The bailout and assistance policies for the tough enterprises”. ”Risk management policy”, “Regional credit center policy” and other relevant policies are also quite effective. On the contrary, “Shrinking and restricting lending policies” proved to be invalid. The research tells us that the effectiveness of credit policies differs from distinct regions, years of seniority, and agent titles. In addition, the policies during global financial crisis (2007-2009) have been deeply influenced by the evaluation of effectiveness during Asian financial crisis (1997-1998). In conclusion, several suggestions are provided. First, the authorities concerned should keep the lessons from previous financial crisis in mind as references for improving credit quality. And the policy-making direction should be oriented to ameliorate the constitution of banking and financial system. Second, banks and connecting enterprises should operate a virtuous circle, cooperate and coexist in difficulties. Third, in consideration of policy implementation, different regions, years of seniority, and agent titles should entrust diverted credit policies to put into practice. In this way, crediting policies can “ Take actions that suit local circumstances and let the right men do the right things.”