Résumé
The modern financial theory assumes the existence of a financing hierarchy for the investments because of bankruptcy costs, different tax rates, asymmetric informations or principal-agents relationship in debt contracts. In this study, we try to verify the existence of such a hierarchy of financing at the level of investments of French small and medium companies during the period 1990-92. The results of the descriptive analysis of the sample show that the cash-flow remain the preferred source of financing, followed by the debts and then the external resources. We can note that the more the firm invests the more it finances externally, after drying out the internal sources of finance. We also present the results of econometric estimations which confirm the existence of a particular structure of financing for the small and medium companies.