There is tremendous interest, in the economic literature, for the determinants of firms’ capital structure decisions. A rich body of empirical works now exists that purports to identify firm- and country-level factors affecting firms’ financing patterns. In addition, more recently, a new...

We demonstrate that the capital structures of small business is mainly driven by asset-backed concept, particularly by the most liquid part of them, i.e. the operating working capital. Return-to-risk analysis is very less relevant because of its misrepresentation in standard financial reporting...

At the macro level, recent policy-relevant research establishes an association between credit booms and banking distress; the focus is on leverage. However, scant evidence is available at the micro level. This study analyses the relationship between lending growth, leverage, and distress at the...

We use a dynamic framework and panel methodology to investigate the determinants of a firms' time-varying capital structure. Our sample comprises 706 European firms from France, Germany, Italy and the U.K. over the period from 1983 to 2002. If capital structure adjustment is costly, firms may...

The objective of this article is to analyse how the regional financial and economic differences influence the capital structure decisions of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Specifically, the paper considers the regional financial and economic differences dividing four aspects: the...

In the run-up to the financial crisis Italian firms significantly increased their debt in absolute terms and in relation to equity and GDP. The positive gap in firms' leverage between Italy and other euro-area countries has widened in recent years, despite the outstanding debt of Italian firms...

In this paper, we investigate whether capital structure differs between for-profit and nonprofit sectors by focusing on two key aspects of the latter: the non-distribution constraint and the stakeholder oriented governance system. We develop a theoretical model and show that the former...

This work analyses the main trends in bond financing by Italian non-financial firms and its role in relation to bank credit across different economic phases. The first part of the analysis refers to the 2008-2019 period, characterized by both crisis and recovery episodes, while the second part...