Capital structure and institutional setting: a decompositional and international analysis

The legal and institutional setting is more and more influential in firms’ financial decisions. Our article analyses firms’ capital structure in an international framework in order to assess the different level of debt use across countries and to identify both common and differential explanatory factors. Although the level of financial leverage is quite different, the factors that have traditionally driven capital structure decisions have much in common in all the legal and institutional settings. The performance and size of the firm, the assets tangibility and the growth opportunities have a relevant but differential effect across the different institutional systems. Consequently, our results suggest that the legal and institutional system of each country does not only affect firms’ capital structure but also creates the conditions to explain a differential effect of the common determinants of firms’ financial choices.     

The effect of short sale constraints on analyst forecast quality: Evidence from a natural experiment in China

We examine the effect of short selling on analyst forecast quality following the pilot program in China in 2010 that allows short selling for selected companies. We find that reduction in short sale constraints significantly improves analyst forecast quality for these pilot-firms when compared to non-pilot firms. Specifically, analyst forecast errors for pilot firms are smaller and forecast dispersions are narrower. Further, we show that the improvement of analyst forecast quality is more prominent for firms with lower prior price efficiencies and disclosure quality, and in locations with lower institutional development. Our findings suggest that short selling activities serve an important role in facilitating the speed of information incorporation and improving the information environment faced by firms.     

分析师预测信息来源的新发现:会计师事务所

文章通过检验券商与公司聘任同一家会计师事务所对券商旗下分析师预测行为的影响,研究了证券分析师的预测信息是否可能来源于会计师事务所.研究发现:(1)分析师更愿意跟踪与所属券商聘任同一家会计师事务所的上市公司,对其发布的盈余预测更准确,也更倾向于额外发布现金流预测.(2)券商与公司从非同聘会计师事务所变更为同聘会计师事务所,其分析师预测的准确性提高,反之则降低.分析师对与所属券商聘任同一家会计师事务所的公司在年报披露前最后一次盈余预测的准确性有更大幅度的提高.(3)同聘会计师事务所对预测准确性的促进作用集中在分析师跟踪少和收入变化大的公司以及非明星分析师发布的预测.文章的研究有助于理解同聘会计师事务所对分析师预测行为的影响,也有助于资本市场上的投资者更好地利用同聘会计师事务所的券商旗下分析师发布的预测报告,拓展了分析师预测信息来源的研究.     

差错责任追究制度与分析师盈余预测

本文分别从分析师跟踪、盈余预测误差和分歧度三个方面考察年报信息披露重大差错责任追究制度对分析师行为的影响.研究发现,建立差错责任追究制度公司的分析师跟踪人数更多、盈余预测误差和分歧度更低,并且这种关系主要存在于高管为男性以及盈余质量较差的公司.进一步研究发现,建立差错责任追究制度的公司盈余信息含量更高、分析师更可能发布...     

Leverage versus volatility: Evidence from the capital structure of European firms

The impact of leverage on financial market stability and the relationship with the real economy is a key concern among researchers. This paper makes an initial attempt to investigate the relationship between a firm’s leverage, return and share price volatility from an Islamic finance perspective and capital structure theory. A multi-country dynamic panel framework and the mean-variance efficient frontier are applied to 320 sample firms from eight European countries, divided into portfolios of low and high debt using the shari’ah screening threshold of 33%. We find that the firm’s return and volatility change with changes in the capital structure. Islamic-compliant stocks show, in most cases, less volatility than non-compliant stocks but are no different in terms of return. Finally, our results tend to imply a case for limiting debt beyond certain levels.     

Determinants of the acquisition of listed versus unlisted firms in different legal and institutional environments

The aim of this article is to analyse the determinants of the decision to acquire unlisted rather than listed firms in different legal and institutional environments. We estimate a probit model considering the mergers and acquisitions (M&As) announced by European listed firms (19 countries) that acquires worldwide listed or unlisted firms (36 countries) in the period 2002–2007. Our results show that managerial opportunism is a determinant in the acquisition of listed firms, occurring with greater probability in acquiring countries with low shareholder and minority shareholder protection. Information asymmetry is another relevant determinant that promotes the acquisitions of unlisted firms. Furthermore, the less developed the capital market in the country of the acquired firm, the greater the probability of acquisitions of unlisted firms. This article contributes to the M&A literature by showing that in addition to managerial opportunism and information asymmetry, the legal and institutional environments in both the acquiring and the target countries are also relevant aspects explaining the decision of whether to acquire listed or unlisted firms.     

资本结构的决定因素-来自中国的证据

同其他国家一样,中国上市公司的财务杠杆随企业规模、非债务性避税规模和公司固定资产的增加而增大,随公司盈利能力增加而减小,而且同上市公司所属行业相关.同时,它还会受到所有权结构的影响.同其他国家不同的是,中国上市公司的财务杠杆随公司经营风险程度的增加而增加,而且企业倾向于持有较低的长期债务.同融资的优序假说相比,静态权衡模型对中国上市公司的资本结构似乎有更强的解释力.     

Board of directors’ quality and firms’ debt financing: the moderating effect of insider ownership – evidence from Omani firms

This study aims to examine the direct effects of board of directors’ quality and insider ownership on firms’ capital structure and the moderating effect of insider ownership on the relationship between board of directors’ quality and firms’ capital structure. The sample of this study consists of the time period 2005–2011. The final sample consists of 535 firm-year observations of public nonfinancial firms listed on the Muscat Securities Market (MSM). The hypotheses are tested using a random effects model. The results reveal that the coefficient sign on the board of directors’ quality is as predicted, but the coefficient sign is insignificant. Further, the results show that insider ownership is positively associated with leverage at the significant level of 10%, suggesting that the inside substantial shareholders employ higher leverage. With regard to the moderating effect of insider ownership, the findings show that the effect of the board of directors’ quality-leverage relationship becomes negative and stronger with increasing insider ownership.     

Product innovation: testing the relative influence of industry,institutional context and firm factors

This article analyses the influence of industry characteristics (concentration and technological opportunity), the institutional framework (social capital and spillovers from the public sector) and some firm factors (external and internal R&D) on product innovation in a unique integrated framework. Based on a sample of Spanish industrial firms, these variables were found to be positively related to firms’ product innovation. Also, results show that in institutional environments with significant levels of social capital and spillovers, firms change their innovation strategy focusing on external R&D.     

分析师利益冲突、乐观偏差与股价崩盘风险

"股价崩盘风险"是当前金融危机背景下财务学的一个研究热点。本文使用2003-2010年中国A股上市公司的数据,研究分析师乐观偏差是否影响上市公司股价崩盘风险,并考察分析师面临的"利益冲突"是否会加剧乐观偏差对股价崩盘风险的影响。研究发现:(1)分析师乐观偏差与上市公司未来股价崩盘风险之间显著正相关,且此关系在"牛市"更为显著;(2)机构投资者持股比例越高,机构投资者数量越多,公司存在再融资行为,以及来自前五大佣金收入券商的分析师比例越高,分析师乐观偏差与崩盘风险之间的正向关系就更为显著,说明"利益冲突"会加剧两者的关系。本文的研究对于全面认识分析师在资本市场中的作用,以及如何降低我国股价崩盘风险、促进股市平稳发展具有重要的理论和现实意义。     

Bribery environments and firm performance: Evidence from CEE countries

We examine the relation between bureaucratic corruption and firm performance in CEE countries. We show that divergent consequences of corruption found in previous studies can be explained by the specifics of the local bribery environment in which firms operate. A higher mean bribery is associated with lower firm performance, while higher dispersion of individual firm bribes appears to facilitate it. We also conduct a detailed analysis by firm sector and size, and countries' institutional environments.     

Firm size and debt maturity as indirect determinants of capital structure: evidence form European panel data

The study aims at verifying whether the firm size and debt maturity affect the relationship between capital structure and its main determinants. Using panel data models, the impact of the primary factors on leverage is compared across three size groups of firms and for different measures of debt in order to identify the size effect and the debt maturity effect in these relationships. The study covers 11 EU countries during the period 2000–2013. Findings provide evidence that financing choices of small firms provide more support for the pecking-order theory, whereas medium and large-sized firms tend to follow the trade-off predictions on leverage. It also appears that the trade-off theory is more applicable for short-term debt, while pecking order – for long-term debt.     

The dynamic adjustment towards target capital structures of firms in transition economies*

We examine the capital structure dynamics of Central and Eastern European firms to get a better understanding of the quantitative and qualitative development of the financial systems in this region. The dynamic model used endogenizes the target leverage as well as the adjustment speed. It is applied to microeconomic data for ten countries. We find that during the transition process, firms generally increased their leverage, lowering the gap between the actual and the target leverage. Profitability and age are the most robust determinants of capital structure targets. Although banking system development has in general enabled firms to get closer to their leverage targets, information asymmetries between firms and banks are still relatively large. As a result, firms prefer internal finance above bank debt and adjust leverage only slowly.     

Investment-based optimal capital structure

This paper extends the classical capital structure model by introducing the output of firm with ‘AK’ production technology dynamically depends on the endogenous investment decision and capital accumulation. Based on our calibration, it shows that the flexibility of dynamic investment and capital accumulation induces the firm to take the lower leverage at financing time and makes the leverage estimate closer to empirically observed leverage ratios, which provides an effective explanation for the ‘under-leverage puzzle’. In addition, this model predicts that the market leverage behaves in a U-shaped manner with capital liquidity, which provides a novel empirical test.     

Labour unions and leverage: evidence from firm-level union data

ABSTRACT

Using firm-level labour union data from Japan, this paper investigates the effect of labour unions on firm leverage. We find that as union coverage increases, both the level of and extent of change in leverage decreases. These relations remain robust when a firm falls into deficit. We also find that firms with higher union coverage have a higher interest coverage ratio. In addition, we find that firms with higher union coverage are less likely to choose issuing debt compared to issuing equity when they face financial distress. Our results imply that significant employee influence enhanced by labour unions increases fixed costs, crowds out the firm’s debt capacity and consequently reduces the firm’s leverage.     

双边投资协定、制度环境和企业对外直接投资区位选择

双边投资协定是两国政府为了促进和保护双边投资签署的协议。作为特定的联系两国的双边制度因素,双边投资协定给企业提供了不同于国家制度环境的保护,因而对企业的投资区位决策产生影响。本文建立了关于双边投资协定、东道国制度环境与母国制度对发展中国家企业对外投资区位选择作用的研究框架。基于中国上市公司2003年至2009年对外直接投资的数据,本文有三点发现:首先,双边投资协定能够促进企业到签约国投资;其次,双边投资协定能够替补东道国制度的缺位,对于促进企业到制度环境较差的签约国投资的作用更大;此外,双边投资协定还能够弥补母国制度支持的不均衡性,对于帮助非国有企业到签约国投资有着显著的积极作用。     

Determinants of Leverage in Slovenian Blue-Chip Firms and Stock Performance Following Substantial Debt Increases

Hypotheses concerning capital structures are some of the most frequently tested in the financial literature. Authors usually discuss different incentives for the use of leverage. Their views can be broadly classified in two main groups. The proponents of the first argue that leverage increases the cash flow available to investors. With the use of debt a firm gains because it uses a cheaper component of capital and since it pays less tax thanks to advantageous debt tax shields. On the other hand, the proponents of the second group stress the importance of minimising transaction costs, and information asymmetry. They point to a pecking order of finance sources. In this article, I explain the most frequently stated drivers that provide incentives for the more extensive use of debt with a focus on an emerging market environment and test whether they are relevant to Slovenian blue-chip firms that emerged from the transition of the last decade.

The second part introduces the owners' point of view. I test whether raised debt levels in fact improve the long-term return to the stockholders of Slovenian firms. This should be expected because of the institution-led capital structure conservatism that firms practised in the past. Three methods are employed to test the relationship between increased levels of debt and long-term stock return. All of them offer a similar conclusion that the expected long-term performance of firms which significantly increased their leverage is no better than the long-term performance of firms that did not. The results are useful for other emerging capital markets in Europe where firms and investors faced similar circumstances tied to their socialist past and transition process.     

Determinants of firms’ investment behaviour: a multilevel approach

This article investigates the determinants of firms’ investment behaviour using firm data from 101 developing and emerging economies. A substantial number of firms does not invest in fixed capital or invests little relative to sales revenue. Using a multilevel probit model we study what factors trigger investment, and using a multilevel Heckman selection model we study what factors influence a firm’s investment-to-sales ratio. We find that firms’ investment behaviour has relatively little dependency on a country’s macroeconomic setting. Additionally, we find that, on average, firms that are completely foreign-owned have a relatively lower investment-to-sales ratio. Finally, we find evidence which suggests that the probability of investing is higher for firms located in countries with more control of corruption and we find some evidence which suggests that partially foreign-owned firms located in countries with relatively less corruption have a relatively higher investment-to-sales ratio.     

How does ownership structure affect capital structure and firm value?Recent evidence from East Asia1

The present paper examines the effects of ownership structures on capital structure and firm valuation. It argues that the effects of separation of control from cash flow rights on capital structure and firm value also depend on the separation of control from management as well as on legal rules and enforcement defining investors’ protection. We obtain firm‐level panel data (three stage least squares, 3SLS) estimates from four of the East Asian countries worst affected by the last crisis. There is evidence that the general wisdom that higher control than cash flow rights may lower firm value may be reversed among owner‐managed family firms in the sample countries.