We test whether a country's level of financial development or institutional quality (or both) have a first order effect on corporate debt maturity decisions on a sample of 359 non-financial firms from five South American countries over a 12 year period. We find that there is a substantial...

This paper investigates the determinants of capital structure for a sample of 13,070 small medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and 67,449 firm-year observations from Eastern European countries over the period 1994-2004. The use of a sample of SMEs in our analysis rather than large listed firms...

We develop a simple model of investment in business groups subject to moral hazard. Our model suggests that productivity and pledgeable income are the drivers of resources in the internal capital markets of these groups. This prediction can be use to explain on the grounds of efficiency some...