Capital Structure Decisions: A Scientometric Assessment and Future Research Lines

Abstract

A company’s capital structure has long captured the interest of academics, industry professionals and decision-makers in corporate finance. This scientometric review carefully examines the large body of research on capital structure decisions. Co-word and co-citation analyses were used as two scientometric analytic techniques. Combining these two techniques helps the researcher understand the studied issue’s evolution and the field’s overall picture. A final dataset of 4,873 was used to synthesise and analyse the capital structure-related research. To the best of our knowledge, there is no comprehensive scientometric review of the literature on the domain of capital structure with this extensive data corpus. This review uses a scientometric approach to analyse the evolution of capital structure research, identify emergent trends and highlight areas that necessitate further investigation. This research lays the groundwork for future scholarly endeavours that resonate with the intricacies of capital structure’s role in value creation and firm sustainability, thereby improving our understanding of capital structure decisions in the contemporary financial landscape.