There are no stylized facts about the capital structure of small firms. Therefore, in this paper I use firm data from 10 Western European countries to contrast the sources of leverage across small and large firms. Specifically, I jointly evaluate the explanatory power of firm-specific, country...

The diffusion of internal rating systems changes the scenario of the financial strategy adopted by firms. The objective of the work consists of understanding how firms can respond to increasingly complex strategies that require an operative and managerial maturity, by building an optimum...

The article analyzes the factors determining the capital structure of the Spanish small and medium enterprises [SMEs]. The analysis is grounded on the agency theory, the signalling approach and the pecking order theory. In particular, the article provides a qualitative and quantitative analysis...

This paper analyses the role that institutional factors play in explaining differences in the capital structure of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across regions belonging to a single country. Specifically, it studies the effect of the development of the financial sector and of the...

This paper argues that financing policies of the firms are central in propagating financial crisis. Studies on the linkage between macro-fragility and micro-vulnerability around financial debacle are common, especially after East-Asian and Mexican crisis in the 1990s. By focusing on the case of...

The variation in the degree of price regulation in the property-liability insurance market in Canada varies across time and space, creating an opportunity to test a recurring theory in regulatory economics: that price regulated firms have higher levels of financial leverage. Using an...

This paper investigates strategic brinksmanship between regulated property-liability insurance firms and their regulators. Prior research suggests that firms increase their financial leverage, and thus their probability of bankruptcy and expected bankruptcy costs, in order to mitigate the...

Empirical studies examining the financing decisions of the firm focus exclusively on publicly held firms, not family-controlled firms despite their economic importance. This study investigates the external financing behavior of family-controlled firms, using a comprehensive sample of 777 large...

The choice of capital structure by firms is a fundamental issue in financial literature. According to a recent finding, the capital structure of firms remains almost unchanged during their lives meaning that leverage ratios are significantly stable over time. The stability of leverage ratios is...