This paper investigates whether financial obstacles, and, more generally, financial pressure faced by firms, significantly affect firm growth. For this purpose, we use an unbalanced panel of about 1,000,000 observations for around 155,000 non-financial corporations in five euro area countries....

Previous studies argued that low investment-cash flow sensitivities of German firms may be caused by dominance of public banking.The paper addresses this topic and applies a unique accounting dataset of German firms. Results from a dynamic panel data approach show that the dependence of...

We test the assumptions of trade-off theory (TOT) and pecking order theory (POT) regarding corporate leverage. The dependent variable being the debt ratio, we apply a linear model upon a balanced panel data-set of 2,370 French SMEs over the period 2002 - 2010. In accordance to TOT, trade credit...

This paper investigates whether financial obstacles, and, more generally, financial pressure faced by firms, significantly affect firm growth. For this purpose, we use an unbalanced panel of about 1,000,000 observations for around 155,000 non-financial corporations in five euro area countries....

Estimating the speed of adjustment towards target leverage using the standard partial adjustment model assumes that all firms within the sample adjust at the same (average) pace. Dynamic capital structure theory predicts heterogeneity in adjustment speed due to firm-specific adjustment costs....

The paper examines the importance of financial constraints for firm capital structure decisions in transitions economies during 1996-2006 using endogenous switching regression with unknown sample separation approach. The evidence suggests that differences in financing constraints have a...

Corporate bond issuers in emerging economies in Asia have often had a choice between an onshore market and an offshore one. Since 1998, however, many of these issuers have increasingly turned to the onshore market. This paper investigates systematically what factors have influenced this choice...

We empirically evaluate 20 prominent contributions to a broad range of areas in the empirical corporate finance literature. We assemble the necessary data and apply a single, simple econometric method, the connected-groups approach of Abowd, Karmarz, and Margolis (1999), to appraise the extent...

In empirical corporate finance, firm size is commonly used as an important, fundamental firm characteristic. However, no research comprehensively assesses the sensitivity of empirical results in corporate finance to different measures of firm size. This paper fills this hole by providing...