Impact of Several Factors on the Change Speed of Capital Structure of Listed Firms in Vietnam

Abstract

Information of capital structure and changes in capital structure plays an important role in corporate financial management. Many researches have shown that the information about changes in capital structure is meaningful and reflects firms' financial position in many aspects. Therefore, studying factors that affect the fast or slow change of firms' capital structure is also meaningful. Based on results of previous researches on the capital structure of enterprises and some proposals for researching impact of some factors on firms’ capital structure change, a regression model including the dependent variable and the 8 independent variables were selected. Data of 174 listed firms in Vietnam and other related data for the period 2015 - 2020 were collected to conduct an empirical research. Our research's aim to clarify the impact of factors including firm size, revenue, asset turnover, ROA, ROE, debt ratio, firm age and GDP growth on the change speed of capital structure of listed firms in Vietnam. Results of the regression analysis show a positive relationship between firm size, asset turnover, debt ratio, ROE and firm age with rapid or slow change of firms’ capital structure, while firms’ revenue has a negative relationship with this change speed. Implications the research's results, limitations and future research directions are discussed.