The behaviour of SMEs' capital structure determinants in different macroeconomic states (original) (raw)
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SSRN Electronic Journal, 2018
The major perspective of this paper is to provide more evidence regarding how "quickly", in different macroeconomic states, companies adjust their capital structure to their leverage targets. This study extends the empirical research on the topic of capital structure by focusing on a quantile regression method to investigate the behavior of firm-specific characteristics and macroeconomic factors across all quantiles of distribution of leverage (book leverage and market leverage). Therefore, depending on a partial adjustment model, we find that the adjustment speed fluctuated in different stages of book versus market leverage. Furthermore, while macroeconomic states change, we detect clear differentiations of the contribution and the effects of the firm-specific and the macroeconomic variables between market leverage and book leverage debt ratios. Consequently, we deduce that across different macroeconomic states the nature and maturity of borrowing influence the persistence and endurance of the relation between determinants and borrowing.
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The objective of this paper was to explore whether and how the main capital structure determinants of SMEs affected capital structure determination in different ways during the years of economic crisis. We used panel data of 8,052 SMEs operating in Greece during 2009-2012. We found that the effect of capital structure determinants on leverage does not change in an environment of economic crisis; larger SMEs continued to show higher debt ratios, the relationship between profitability and tangibility of assets with leverage continued to be negative, and growth was positively related to leverage.
arXiv (Cornell University), 2018
The major perspective of this paper is to provide more evidence regarding how "quickly", in different macroeconomic states, companies adjust their capital structure to their leverage targets. This study extends the empirical research on the topic of capital structure by focusing on a quantile regression method to investigate the behavior of firm-specific characteristics and macroeconomic factors across all quantiles of distribution of leverage (book leverage and market leverage). Therefore, depending on a partial adjustment model, we find that the adjustment speed fluctuated in different stages of book versus market leverage. Furthermore, while macroeconomic states change, we detect clear differentiations of the contribution and the effects of the firm-specific and the macroeconomic variables between market leverage and book leverage debt ratios. Consequently, we deduce that across different macroeconomic states the nature and maturity of borrowing influence the persistence and endurance of the relation between determinants and borrowing.
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