What factors are economically important in the capital structure decision of European firms?

2024

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DOI 10.1080/13504851.2024.2302910
Data confidence 70 medium
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Abstract

Several factors previously identified in the finance literature are statistically significant in determining the long-term debt ratio of European firms. However, only age, size, current assets, and tangible assets have a meaningful economic impact. Tangible assets and firm size play a role in tradeoff theory and age is mentioned in pecking order theory, but our results provide only moderate support for these two theories of capital structure.