文档介绍：外文题目: How firm characteristics affect capital structure:
an empirical study
出处: Managerial Finance
作者: Nikolaos Eriotis
原文:
How firm characteristics affect capital structure: an empirical study
By Nikolaos Eriotis
Introduction
The various financing decisions are vital for the financial welfare of the firm. A false decision about the capital structure may lead to financial distress and eventually to bankruptcy. The management of a firm sets its capital structure in a way that firm’s value is maximized. However, firms do choose different financial leverage levels in their effort to attain an optimal capital structure. Although theoretical and empirical research suggests that there is an optimal capital structure, there is no specified methodology, yet, that financial managers can use in order to achieve an optimal debt level. However, financial theory does provide some help in understanding how the chosen financing mix affects the firm’s value.
This paper shed some light on the determinants of the capital structure of the major Greek firms listed on the Athens Stock Exchange (ASE). We examine the cross sectional variation in leverage among the Greek firms for the time period 1997-2001. We include variables that are based on different capital structure theories and have never been investigated for the Greek market before, such as the interest coverage ratio and the quick ratio. We also differentiate the firms that heavily use debt capital (. a debt ratio more than 50 per cent) using a dummy variable. Thus, the conclusions of this paper are expected to enlighten the darksome scientific area of the capital structure determination for the Greek firms.
The paper anized as follows. In the next session, we review some of the theoretical and empirical literature concerning the determinants and effects of
leverage. In section 3, we describe our data and we justify the choice of the variables used in our analysis. The fourth section presents the result of the