Fachartikel

Target Capital Structure and Adjustment Speed in Asia

Studies on the capital structure of Asian corporations are rare, and most of those studies support different explanations of financing decisions compared to the ones accepted for the USA
and Europe. We test relationships that are typical of the Tradeoff Theory and the Pecking
Order Theory, and analyze the speed of adjustment toward target capital structures for 1239
companies with capitalizations of more than US$1 billion listed on 11 Asian stock exchanges
and belonging to eight industrial sectors. Our results are based on generalized method of
moments (GMM) estimations for the determinants of capital structures and system-GMM
estimations for the speed of adjustment, and robustness is checked using book leverage and
market leverage on the basis of ordinary least squares estimations and two-stage least squares
estimations. We contribute to the literature by finding strong evidence that companies in
Asia pursue target capital structures, as predicted by the Tradeoff Theory. Only in one respect
does the Pecking Order Theory demonstrate superior explanatory power. We further show
that the convergence to target capital structures is consistent with international evidence, estimated at an annual adjustment speed of 24–45% of original leverage levels. Finally, our comparison among eight industries shows that the capital structure choice in Asia is influenced
by fixed effects.
Autor
Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Klaus Spremann
Andre Getzmann, Sebastian Lang
Artikel
2014
Fachbereich
Statistik/Ökonometrie
Fachrichtung
Finanzwirtschaft
Schlagwörter
Kapitalstruktur
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Bücher des Autors
Buch Cover

allgemein, Finanzwirtschaft

Finanzmärkte
Buch Cover

Betriebswirtschaftslehre, Finanzwirtschaft

Finance (IMF: International Management and Finance)