Temporary versus Permanent Shocks: Explaining Corporate Financial Policies

We investigate corporate financial policies in the presence of both temporary and permanent shocks to firms’ cash flows. In our framework, cash flows can be negative and are imperfectly correlated with firm value, and earnings volatility differs from asset volatility. These results are consistent with empirical stylized facts. They are also contrary to the implications of existing dynamic capital structure models that allow only for permanent shocks to cash flows. Temporary shocks increase the importance of financial flexibility and may provide an intuitively simple and realistic explanation of empirically observed financial conservatism and low leverage phenomena. The theoretical framework developed in this article general enough to be used in various corporate finance applications

Capital Structure and Oligarch Ownership

This study examines the effects of oligarch ownership on corporate capital structures. Using panel data from Ukraine, I find that oligarch-owned companies employ significantly more debt and liabilities than their peers. However, there is no direct relation between oligarch ownership and target capital structure. Whereas the determinants of target leverage are similar across all owners, differences in firm characteristics also have a fairly small effect. I show that larger leverage is due to better access to debt, which results in lower rebalancing costs and faster restructurings of oligarch-owned companies. The findings clearly suggest that oligarchs benefit from the accumulated advantages

A two-part fractional regression model for the financial leverage decisions of micro, small, medium and large firms

In this paper we examine the following two hypotheses, which traditional theories of capital structure are relatively silent about: (i) the determinants of financial leverage decisions are different for micro, small, medium and large firms; and (ii) the factors that determine whether or not a firm issues debt are different from those that determine how much debt it issues. Using a binary choice model to explain the probability of a firm raising debt and a fractional regression model to explain the relative amount of debt issued, we find strong support for both hypotheses. Confirming recent empirical evidence, we find also that, although larger firms are more likely to use debt, conditional on their having some debt, firm size is negatively related to the proportion of debt used by firms.Capital structure, Financial leverage, Zero leverage, Micro firms, SMEs, Fractional data, Two-part model,

The effect of taxes on the debt policy of spanish listed companies

This study explores the role of taxes in explaining companies' financing decisions. We test whether the corporate tax shields explanation of capital structure is applicable to firms listed on the Spanish stock exchange over the period 2007-2013. Taxes are found to be economically and statistically significant determinants of capital structure. Our results suggest that marginal tax rates affect the debt policies of Spanish listed companies, and the existence of non-debt tax shields constitutes an alternative to the use of debt as a tax shelter. Consistent with theoretical expectations, there is a stronger relation between debt and taxation in less levered firms. Finally, we empirically estimate the impact of the new thin-capitalization rule put forth by the Spanish government in 2012 on the financing behaviour of Spanish listed companies. Our empirical evidence supports the existence of a tax reform effect, where companies affected by interest deductibility limitations reduce their leverage more than companies that are not affected