Long-term persistence in corporate capital structure: Evidence from India

This study examines the stability of corporate capital structure in a sample of listed Indian firms for the period 1988–2015. In general, the firms do not maintain a stable level of leverage over long durations. The firm specific temporal variations in leverage are large and significant. We find that capital structure models that incorporate time varying firm effects perform better in explaining the variation in leverage than those that employ time invariant firm effects. The cross-sectional distribution of leverage also exhibits considerable variations over time. The quartile decompositions of leverage cross-sections reveal that migrations across leverage quartiles are pervasive. Only the firms with low leverage ratios ratio exhibit some persistence in their leverage ratios. High leverage ratios are not rare but are invariably transient.     

On the relation between ownership structure and capital structure

The agency relationship between managers and shareholders has the potential to influence decision-making in the firm which in turn potentially impacts on firm characteristics such as value and leverage. Prior evidence has demonstrated an association between ownership structure and firm value. This paper extends the literature by examining a further link between ownership structure and capital structure. Using an agency framework, it is argued that the distribution of equity ownership among corporate managers and external blockholders may have a significant relation with leverage. The empirical results provide support for a positive relation between external blockholders and leverage, and non-linear relation between the level of managerial share ownership and leverage. The results also suggest that the relation between external block ownership and leverage varies across the level of managerial share ownership. These results are consistent with active monitoring by blockholders, and the effects of convergence-of-interests and management entrenchment.     

中国企业杠杆:一个周期性问题?

一直以来,企业部门杠杆率在中国宏观杠杆率中占有重要的地位。通过构建企业杠杆率的动态局部调整模型,本文区分了经济周期对企业杠杆率的直接和间接影响,并利用中国工业企业数据库对二者进行测算。结果显示,用观察经济周期哑变量估计系数的方式来判断经济周期对企业杠杆率的影响,会显著高估企业杠杆率顺周期调整的程度,因为这只捕捉了周期的直接影响。在同时考虑了经济周期对杠杆率的间接影响后,我们发现:第一,中国企业杠杆率总体仍具有顺周期性。这表明货币政策在维护物价水平、熨平经济周期波动时,能够对企业杠杆率稳定产生一定的正向溢出效应。因此,双支柱调控框架具有内在一致性,可以形成政策合力。第二,中国企业杠杆率变动的顺周期性较弱,尤其是国有企业。因此,想要在保持物价和经济增长稳定的同时实现稳杠杆,货币政策和宏观审慎政策需相互协调配合。本文的研究为思考双支柱调控框架的分工与协调提供了有益的微观基础。     

Macroeconomic conditions and capital structure adjustment speed

Using two dynamic partial adjustment capital structure models to estimate the impact of several macroeconomic factors on the speed of capital structure adjustment toward target leverage, we find evidence that firms adjust their leverage toward target faster in good macroeconomic states relative to bad states. This evidence holds whether or not firms are subject to financial constraints. Our results are robust to an alternative method of calculating states and to omitting zero-debt boundary firms and are not driven by firm size, deviation from target, or leverage definitions.     

Optimal capital structure under corporate and personal taxation

In this paper, a model of corporate leverage choice is formulated in which corporate and differential personal taxes exist and supply side adjustments by firms enter into the determination of equilibrium relative prices of debt and equity. The presence of corporate tax shield substitutes for debt such as accounting depreciation, depletion allowances, and investment tax credits is shown to imply a market equilibrium in which each firm has a unique interior optimum leverage decision (with or without leverage-related costs). The optimal leverage model yields a number of interesting predictions regarding cross-sectional and time-series properties of firms' capital structures. Extant evidence bearing on these predictions is examined.     

Determinants of the variability in corporate effective tax rates and tax reform: Evidence from Australia

This study examines the determinants of the variability in corporate effective tax rates in Australia spanning the Ralph Review of Business Taxation reform. Our results indicate that corporate effective tax rates are associated with several major firm-specific characteristics, including firm size, capital structure (leverage) and asset mix (capital intensity, inventory intensity and R&D intensity). While the Ralph Review tax reform had a significant impact on many of these associations, corporate effective tax rates continue to be associated with firm size, capital structure and asset mix after the tax reform.     

AN EMPIRICAL MODEL OF CAPITAL STRUCTURE: SOME NEW EVIDENCE

Using a general autoregressive distributed lag model, we estimate the longrun steady state determinants of corporate capital structure. We find that, in the long run, the leverage ratio is related positively to the corporate tax rate and firm size and negatively to future growth opportunities and stock returns. By contrast, there appears to be no relation between leverage and the corporate tax rate on a short-run year to year basis. Our results suggest that prior empirical evidence on capital structure is of questionable value precisely because of its failure to clearly separate the short-run relationship between leverage and its determinants from its long-run relationship.     

Capital Structure, CEO Dominance, and Corporate Performance

We use agency theory to investigate the influence of CEO dominance on variation in capital structure. Due to agency conflicts, managers may not always adopt leverage choices that maximize shareholders’ value. Consistent with the prediction of agency theory, the evidence reveals that, when the CEO plays a more dominant role among top executives, the firm adopts significantly lower leverage, probably to evade the disciplinary mechanisms associated with debt financing. Our results are important as they demonstrate that CEO power matters to critical corporate outcomes such as capital structure decisions. In addition, we find that the impact of changes in capital structure on firm performance is more negative for firms with more powerful CEOs. Overall, the results are in agreement with prior literature, suggesting that strong CEO dominance appears to exacerbate agency costs and is thus detrimental to firm value.     

Managerial incentives and corporate leverage: evidence from the United Kingdom

This paper investigates the effect of managerial incentives and corporate governance on capital structure using a large sample of UK firms during the period 1999–2004. The analysis revolves around the view that managerial incentives are important in determining a firm's leverage. However, we argue that the exact impact of these incentives on leverage is likely to be determined by firm‐specific governance characteristics. To conduct our investigation, we construct a simple corporate governance measure using detailed ownership and governance information. We present evidence of a significant non‐monotonic relationship between executive ownership and leverage. There is also strong evidence suggesting that corporate governance practices have a significant impact on leverage. More importantly, the results reveal that the nature of the relation between executive ownership and leverage depends on the firm's corporate governance structure.     

Capital structure in the Chilean corporate sector: Revisiting the stylized facts

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the traditional drivers of the capital structure, in addition to others particularities of the Chilean corporate sector. Using panel data methodology, this study examines the potential drivers of the capital structure in a sample of 157 Chilean firms. To do that, this study also includes variables not commonly used in the literature (e.g. ownership concentration, business groups affiliation, and dividends), as distinctive elements of the Chilean corporate sector. Our results show a positive effect of firm size and ownership concentration on firms leverage; as well as a negative effect of the pay-out policy, growth opportunities, non-debt tax shields, and profitability on the leverage. Some expected relationships in the Anglo-Saxon context are also curiously observed in Chile. Nevertheless, there are some relations that are not in line with the current literature such as the negative relationship between asset tangibility and leverage. Finally, firms’ affiliation to economic groups allows them to take advantage of internal capital markets, increasing leverage. This suggests that some of the insights from the current theoretical bodies are not portable across countries, and consequently, much remains to be done in order to understand the impact of different institutional features on capital structure choices.Emerging markets provide a challenge to existing models that need to be reformulated to accommodate the characteristics of these markets. This study contributes in this direction by taking into consideration the particularities of an emerging Latin American Economy.     

Capital Structure, Information Acquisition and Investment Decisions in an Industry Framework

This paper analyzes the relationship between a firm's capital structure and its information acquisition prior to capital budgeting decisions. It is found that low-growth industries can sustain a large number of levered firms. In these industries, leverage is negatively related to a firm's incentive to acquire information during the capital budgeting process. In contrast, high-growth industries only sustain a small number of levered firms. In these industries, levered firms acquire more information than all-equity financed firms. The model yields empirical predictions regarding the effects of leverage on the expected amount and the volatility of corporate investment. While leverage does not affect firm value, highly levered firms generate a more volatile cash flow than firms with low debt levels.     

When does leverage hurt productivity growth? A firm-level analysis

In the wake of the global financial crisis, several macroeconomic contributions have highlighted the risks of excessive credit expansion. In particular, too much finance can have a negative impact on growth. We examine the microeconomic foundations of this argument, positing a non-monotonic relationship between leverage and firm-level productivity growth in the spirit of the trade-off theory of capital structure. A threshold regression model estimated on a sample of Central and Eastern European countries confirms that TFP growth increases with leverage until the latter reaches a critical threshold beyond which leverage lowers TFP growth. This estimate can provide guidance to firms and policy makers on identifying “excessive” leverage. We find similar non-monotonic relationships between leverage and proxies for firm value. Our results are a first step in bridging the gap between the literature on optimal capital structure and the wider macro literature on the finance-growth nexus.     

Financial leverage clienteles: Theory and evidence

This paper examines the hypothesis that investors will sort themselves out into tax-induced ‘financial leverage clienteless’ in which the common stocks of highly levered firms will be held by individuals with low personal tax rates, while the shares of firms with little or no leverage will be held by individuals with high personal tax rates. Although the idea of financial leverage clienteless has appeared in the literature before, the immediate motivation for this investigation is a recent paper by Merton Miller. In that paper he argues that under the current U.S. tax structure, personal taxes will offset corporate taxes such that in equilibrium the value of any individual firm will be independent of its use of debt financing. We extend his analysis to show specifically the way in which financial leverage clienteles would come about in his assumed tax environment. We then conduct some direct empirical tests of the leverage clientele hypothesis. These tests can also be viewed as indirect tests of Miller's new proposition on the irrelevance of capital structures. The results of the tests are mixed: The relationship between corporate leverage policies and investors' tax rates is statistically significant, but its magnitude is less than would be predicted by the theory.     

The financing behaviour of listed Chinese firms

This paper examines the corporate financing behaviour of listed companies in the People's Republic of China. Our results suggest that some determinants of firm leverage (e.g., size, asset tangibility, growth opportunities and profitability) commonly cited in studies on developed economies also appear to be important in China. In particular, the positive relationships that firm size and asset tangibility have with firm leverage are consistent with the predictions of the static trade-off capital structure model. However, these commonly quoted determinants function in a way different from that reported in developing countries. Moreover, we do not find that State ownership, legal person ownership and foreign ownership have important influences on the capital structure choices of Chinese firms. Given the tight regulatory control over equity issues and acute owner–manager incentive conflicts in State-owned firms, we also hypothesise, and find evidence to support, that Chinese firms have built-in incentives for raising equity. This provides one explanation of the negative effect of profitability on firm leverage and shows that some of the unique Chinese institutional features do help shape corporate financing behaviour.     

Debt and market incompleteness

This paper provides a capital structure equilibrium analysis in an environment characterized by market incompleteness and risky debt. Market incompleteness, together with a comparative advantage for corporate borrowing, leads to a Miller (1977)-type capital structure equilibrium wherein each firm within an industry faces an indeterminate debt level. However, at the aggregate-industry level, corporations act as financial intermediaries to generate cross-sectional capital structure patterns across industries, despite the fact that rents associated with financial intermediation services dissipate in equilibrium for any particular firm. Additional implications are drawn for observed cross-sectional and time-series regularities in capital structure.     

What Do We Know about the Capital Structure of Privately Held US Firms? Evidence from the Surveys of Small Business Finance

This study examines the capital‐structure decisions of privately held US firms using data from four nationally representative surveys conducted from 1987 to 2003. Book‐value firm leverage, as measured by either the ratio of total loans to total assets or the ratio of total liabilities to total assets, is negatively related to firm age and minority ownership; and is positively related to industry median leverage, the corporate legal form of organization, and to the number of banking relationships. In general, these results provide mixed support for both the Pecking‐Order and Trade‐Off theories of capital structure.     

Information Content of Insider Trading Around Corporate Announcements: The Case of Capital Expenditures

There is gathering evidence of insider trading around corporate announcements of dividends, capital expenditures, equity issues and repurchases, and other capital structure changes. Although signaling models have been used to explain the price reaction of these announcements, a usual assumption made in these models is that insiders cannot trade to gain from such announcements. An innovative feature of this paper is to model trading by corporate insiders (subject to disclosure regulation) as one of the signals. Detailed testable predictions are described for the interaction of corporate announcements and concurrent insider trading. In particular, such interaction is shown to depend crucially on whether the firm is a growth firm, a mature firm, or a declining firm. Empirical proxies for firm technology are developed based on measures of growth and Tobin's q ratio. In the underlying “efficient” signaling equilibrium, investment announcements and net insider trading convey private information of insiders to the market at least cost. The paper also addresses issues of deriving intertemporal announcement effects from the equilibrium (cross-sectional) pricing functional. Other announcement effects relate the intensity of the market response to insider trading, variance of firm cash flows, risk aversion of the insiders, and characteristics of firm technology (growth, mature, or declining).     

The effects on investment incentives of an allowance for corporate equity tax system: the Belgian case as an example

The Modigliani–Miller theorem serves as the standard finance paradigm on corporate capital structure and managerial decision making. Implicitly, it is assumed that the market possesses full information about the firm. However, if firm managers have insider information, they may attempt to ‘signal’ changes in the firm’s financial structure and, in competitive equilibrium, shareholders will draw deductions from such signals. Empirical work shows that the value of underlying firms rises with leverage because investors expect such firms to implement positive NPV projects. We empirically examine this view using a sample of debt issue announcements by publicly traded firms listed on the London Stock Exchange. We argue that the timing of debt issues is fundamental in determining the relationship between leverage and risk-adjusted returns. We show that an announcing firm’s intrinsic value may not rise depending on when management publicly ‘signals’ changes in their firm’s capital structure. Specifically, we show that risk-adjusted returns rise positively for firms that make debt announcements during normal economic conditions while they tend to decline for firms making debt announcements during recessionary periods. During recessionary periods, market risk and loss aversion rise and investors focus less on the potential growth of debt announcing firms and focus more on potential losses instead. We conclude that the timing of new debt is of paramount importance and managers’ inability to prudently time such announcements can lead to exacerbated levels of systematic risk coupled with a significant erosion in shareholder wealth.     

THE CAPITAL STRUCTURE CHOICE: NEW EVIDENCE FOR A DYNAMIC TRADEOFF MODEL

Most academic insights about corporate capital structure decisions come from models that focus on the trade-off between the tax benefits and financial distress costs of debt financing. But empirical tests of corporate capital structure indicate that actual debt ratios are considerably different from those predicted by the models, casting doubt on whether most companies have leverage targets at all. In particular, there is considerable evidence that corporate leverage ratios reflect in large part the tendency of profitable companies to use their excess cash flow to pay down debt, while unprofitable companies build up higher leverage ratios. Such behavior is consistent with a competing theory of capital structure known as the "pecking order" model, in which management's main objectives are to preserve financing flexibility and avoid issuing equity.
The results of the authors' recent study suggest that although past profits are an important predictor of observed debt ratios at any given time, companies nevertheless often make financing and stock repurchase decisions designed to offset the effects of past profitability and move their debt ratios toward their target capital structures. This evidence provides support for a compromise theory called the dynamic tradeoff model, which says that although companies often deviate from their leverage targets, over the longer run they take measures to close the gap between their actual and targeted leverage ratios.     

The Effect of CEO Option Compensation on the Capital Structure: A Natural Experiment

Firms simultaneously choose both their capital and their executive compensation structure. Using the Internal Revenue Code 162(m) tax law as an exogenous shock to compensation structure in a natural experiment setting, I identify firm leverage changes as a result of chief executive officer (CEO) option compensation changes. The evidence provides strong support for debt agency theory. Firms appear to decrease leverage when CEOs are paid with more options and when CEO options become a higher percentage of future cash flows. The findings are robust to controlling for corporate governance and convertible debt.