Our paper documents that capital utilization and short-term debt are procyclical. We show that a strong positive relationship exists both at the aggregate and firm levels, and it persists even when we control the regressions for firm size, profits, growth, and business cycle effects. In addition, our DSGE model shows that in the presence of capital utilization, positive real and financial shocks cause the firm to change its financing of the equity payout policy from earnings to debt, resulting in an increase in short-term debt. Therefore, ignoring the firm's optimal decision on capital utilization may lead to misleading conclusions on how leverage is undertaken.

我们的文件证明资本利用和短期债务是顺周期性的。我们表明，在总体和企业层面都存在强正相关，即使我们控制了企业规模、利润、增长和商业周期效应的回归，这种关系仍然存在。此外，我们的 DSGE 模型表明，在存在资本利用的情况下，正的实际和金融冲击导致公司将其股权支付政策的融资从收益转变为债务，导致短期债务增加。因此，忽略公司关于资本利用的最佳决策可能会导致关于如何使用杠杆的误导性结论。