The Interaction of the Financing and Investment Decisions: Preliminary Results in the Australian Context

In this paper we report preliminary empirical results on the issue of the interaction of the investment and financing decisions in the Australian context. The investigation was implemented on a sample ranging from 144 to 221 firms for the period from 1980/85. Strong support for the hypothesis that investments and dividends are competing uses of funds, implying presence of interaction, is found for two (1983/84, 1984/85) of the five years under study. Work is in train to extend the sample period from five to ten years in order to obtain a reasonable persepctive of the distribution of support/non-support for the link between the investment and financing decisions.