Determinants of capital structure: evidence from a major developing economy

Abstract

A major shortcoming of capital structure studies on developing economies is that they generally restrict their analyses to large public manufacturing firms. Consequently, we know little about the applicability of various capital structure theories to firms that are private, small, and/or outside the manufacturing industry in these economies. In this paper, we conduct a comparative test of the trade-off and pecking order theories using a comprehensive firm-level dataset that covers manufacturing, non-manufacturing, small, large, public, and private firms in a major developing economy, Turkey. The trade-off theory provides a better description of the capital structures of all firm types than the pecking order theory. Moreover, the trade-off theory appears to be particularly suitable for understanding the financing choices of large private firms in the non-manufacturing sector and when the economic environment is relatively stable. By contrast, pecking order theory is most useful when it comes to small public manufacturing firms, especially when the economic environment is relatively unstable.