Structure Adjustment Speed Research Articles

Capital structure speed of adjustment heterogeneity across zero leverage and leveraged European firms

This paper investigates whether leveraged and zero-leverage firms pursue or not a debt target level and, if so, how fast they adjust to that target. We also investigate how the influence of firms’ debt policy on capital structure speed of adjustment (SOA) changes with different financial systems, macroeconomic conditions, financial constraints and financial flexibility levels. Using the dynamic panel fractional estimator and a sample of European listed firms for the 1995–2016 period, we find that both zero-leverage and leveraged firms actively adjust to a target debt ratio. We also find that, in general, leveraged firms display a significantly higher SOA than zero-leverage firms (27.6 % vs. 22.1 %), with only two exceptions: there are no significant differences when the analysis is restricted to financially constrained firms; and during the 2008 financial crisis zero-leverage firms adjusted significantly faster (46.8 %) than leveraged firms (25.6 %) and relative to non-crisis years (21.6 %).

Investigating Capital Structure Speed of Adjustment (SOA) of Indonesian Companies for Corporate Value

The objective of this study is to evaluate influence of growth potential, profitability, company size, ratio between capital structure and its target, short-term loan, asset maturity, growth of GDP and inflation rate towards capital structure SOA. The study involved secondary data in the form of financial reports from manufacturing companies listed in Indonesian Stock Exchange (ISE) published in ISE website, www.idx.co.id , and National Bureau of Statistics data about Indonesian economy published in www.bps.go.id , National Bureau of Statistics. From the result of partial adjustment model estimation, significant leverage lag shows that Indonesian manufacturing companies adjust their capital structure towards target leverage with SOA of 64.73% per year. This finding confirms in Darminto and Manurung (J Bus Manag 1(1):35–52, 2008) that capital structure SOA of Indonesian companies is relatively faster than that in the developed countries like USA (30%) (Flannery and Rangan in J Financ Econ 79(3):469–506. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfineco.2005.03.004 , 2006). Capital structure SOA of manufacturing companies in Indonesia is similar to Ramjee and Gwatidzo (Medit Account Res 20(1):52–67, 2012)’s study on capital structure SOA of manufacturing companies in South Africa (between 62.3 and 65.5% per year). Originality of this study is capital structure measurement used in the study. Until recently, two major theories, trade-off theory and pecking order theory, have been used to explain capital structure of companies. Previous studies evaluated both theories separately. This study is based on “dynamic trade-off theory” in which the trade-off theory and pecking order theory are evaluated simultaneously instead of partially.

Bias correction in the estimation of dynamic panel models in corporate finance

Dynamic panel models play an increasingly important role in numerous areas of corporate finance research, and a variety of (biased) estimation methods have been proposed in the literature. The biases inherent in these estimation methods have a material impact on inferences about corporate behavior, especially when the empirical model is misspecified. We propose a bias-corrected global minimum variance (GMV) combined estimation procedure to mitigate this estimation problem. We choose the capital structure speed of adjustment (SOA) setting to illustrate the proposed method using both simulated and actual empirical corporate finance data. The GMV estimator non-trivially reduces bias and hence meaningfully increases the reliability of inferences based on parameter estimates. This method can be readily applied to many other corporate finance contexts.

What Do Credit Markets Tell Us About the Tradeoff Theory and Speed of Adjustment?

This article proposes a methodology to infer investors’ expectations about the speed at which firms adjust to their target leverage. We find that in the long run bond and CDS investors expect leverage to converge towards a target as suggested by the tradeoff theory. On average, the credit markets imply a fairly rapid annual speed of adjustment of 26%. However, we also find strong support that in the short run the expected adjustment process implicit in the prices of credit instruments is affected by transaction costs, pecking order, and market timing. Overall, we show that one can learn about capital structure speed of adjustment not just from realized leverage changes, but also from expectations embedded in market prices.