Evidence
Tests of the pecking order theory have not been able to show that it is of first-order importance in determining a firm's capital structure. However, several authors have found that there are instances where it is a good approximation of reality. On the one hand, Fama and French, and also Myers and Shyam-Sunder find that some features of the data are better explained by the Pecking Order than by the trade-off theory. Goyal and Frank show, among other things, that Pecking Order theory fails where it should hold, namely for small firms where information asymmetry is presumably an important problem.
Read more about this topic: Pecking Order Theory
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