Institutional determinants of capital structure adjustment speeds

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Oeztekin, Oezde; Flannery, Mark J.
• 署名单位: University of Kansas; State University System of Florida; University of Florida
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF FINANCIAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-405X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jfineco.2011.08.014
• 发表日期: 2012
• 页码: 88-112
• 关键词: dynamic capital structure; Trade-off theory; International; PARTIAL ADJUSTMENT; institutions

摘要

Many authors relate a firm's performance to legal and political features and the regulatory environment in which it operates. This article compares firms' capital structure adjustments across countries and investigates whether institutional differences help explain the variance in estimated adjustment speeds. We find that legal and financial traditions significantly correlate with firm adjustment speeds. More narrowly, institutional features also relate to adjustment speeds, consistent with the hypothesis that better institutions lower the transaction costs associated with adjusting a firm's leverage. Such associations between institutional arrangements and leverage adjustment speeds are consistent with the dynamic trade-off theory of capital structure choice. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.