This paper is concerned with the shifting of taxable profits by means of borrowing and lending between affliates of multinational corporations. Empirical evidence is provided using microlevel panel data of virtually all German multinationals made available by the German Central Bank...

We use a survey to identify a consumer bias with regard to different sources of debt-financing. Less salient debt may generate psychological benefits. This should be weighed against the possible economic costs of a sub-optimal capital structure; but low levels of financial literacy make it...

In this paper we study corporate debt values, capital structure, and the term structure of interest rates in a unified framework. We employ numerical techniques to compute the firm's optimal capital structure and the value of its long-term risky debt and yield spreads when the value of the...

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...

This study explores the significance of firm-specific, institutional, and macroeconomic factors in explaining variation in leverage using a sample of firms from nine Eastern European countries. Country-specific factors are the main determinants of variation in leverage for small unlisted...

We examine the empirical determinants of debt-maturity structure of 266 firms listed on the KSE over the period 2000 to 2004 using several variants of dynamic panel data models. We find mixed support for the agency cost hypothesis as our results show that debtmaturity increases with the size of...

We characterize the relation between corporate asset structure and capital structure by exploiting variation in the salability of tangible assets. Theory suggests that tangibility increases borrowing capacity because it allows creditors to more easily repossess a firm’’s assets. Tangible...

This study examines how family firm characteristics affect capital structure decisions. In our analysis we disentangle the influence of three distinct components of a family firm: ownership, supervisory and management board activities by the founding family. Thereby, we use a unique panel...

Multinational companies can exploit the tax advantage of debt more aggressively than national companies by shifting debt from affiliates in low tax countries to affiliates in high tax countries. Previous papers have either omitted internal debt or external debt from the analysis. We are the...

This paper examines the interplay between the real and financial decisions of the competitive firm under output price uncertainty. The firm faces additional sources of uncertainty that are aggregated into a background risk. We show that the firm always chooses its optimal debt-equity ratio to...