We investigate the relationship among multinational operation, ownership and capital structure using data from China's A-share listed companies. We find that, in general, multinational enterprises (MNEs) have lower leverages than domestic enterprises (DEs). More importantly, we document a...

We study the effects of uncertainty on corporate leverage adjustments with respect to investment spikes and find that overlevered and underlevered firms behave very differently in response to the combination of uncertainty and investment spikes. Overlevered firms facing high uncertainty converge...

Market imperfections such as taxes, asymmetric information and agency problems make capital structure decisions relevant to the value of the firm. More specially, the agency theory suggests that debt financing is one of the governance mechanisms to mitigate agency costs of equity capital and...

This study examines the influence of labour market conditions on corporate capital structure in a sample of 2,892 firms from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK. After considering the effect of unemployment and inflation, we analyse the impact of two market imperfections: employees’...

The global financial crisis has shown that money affects the real economy. This study examines the influence of the price and stock of money in the economy on capital structure throughout the business cycle during the last financial crisis, with particular focus on the roles of long- and...

Does state ownership hinder or help firms access credit? We use data on almost 4 million firms in 89 countries to study the relationship between state ownership and corporate leverage. Controlling for country-sector-year fixed effects and conventional firm-level determinants of leverage, we show...

Does state ownership hinder or help firms access credit? We use data on almost 4 million firms in 89 countries to study the relationship between state ownership and corporate leverage. Controlling for country-sector-year fixed effects and conventional firm-level determinants of leverage, we show...

Why don't non-financial companies in Europe issue more equity? Using experimental data on firms from Europe, this paper analyses how firms trade-off between debt and external equity financing. It finds that firms are willing to pay a substantial premium on debt when presented with an equity...

This paper studies how tax shields of loss-making entities affect resource allocation within business groups. Evidence from a large international sample and a single-country regression discontinuity design suggests that groups avoid their member firms' defaults when tax shields from...

In this paper, we ask how firms’ optimal debt structure responds to a change in the bankruptcy regime. While existing work shows that this relationship is dependent on the ex-ante liquidation value of a firm, we demonstrate that the ownership of lenders they are connected to also matters. We...