Existing research demonstrates that corporate financing decisions influence the cash-flow rights and control rights of the securities issued by companies differently and that the same corporate capital structures and/or ownership patterns have diverse effects and aims across countries, especially when emerging countries are analysed. The 1research purpose of this investigation is to understand how corporate financing decisions are affected by ownership structure in emerging countries. For this purpose, two game-theoretic models are developed and an empirical test is carried out. The first theoretical model analyses a number of key factors inducing a separation of ownership and control in emerging countries. This model argues that large private benefits of control, extreme risk, low investor protection, inefficient capital markets, and governments sympathetic to incumbent management at the expense of outside investors are factors contributing to create a separation of ownership and control in emerging markets. The second model examines the positive side of network creation through the analysis of the interaction of empathy and economic gains. This model identifies important factors promoting the formation of business groups in emerging countries. The empirical study is a two-fold analysis. Firstly, it tests the effects of well-known determinants of capital structure on debt; secondly, the effects of ownership and control in the financial policies of emerging countries are analysed. To do so, corporate financial data and firm-level data of Mexican publicly traded companies for was gathered. As expected, asset tangibility, company size, profitability and market to book ratio proved to be important firm-specific capital structure determinants, similar to the case of developed countries. Business risk and effective tax rate are key firm-specific capital structure determinants, as emerging markets research has identified. The two factors proposed by this researcher, viz. consolidation and liquidity are significant in the determination of capital structure of the Mexican publicly traded companies. Further, almost two thirds of Mexican publicly traded companies are family controlled. When families are large shareholders, they favour debt financing; whereas when families are the majority controlling shareholder they prefer issue shares, the latter supports the risk management argument proposed by Hagelin et al. (2006) and Céspedes et al. (2010).

The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of state ownership in Saudi firms listed in the stock market. The first chapter studies the influence of state ownership on financial constraint on investment. Some scholars believe state ownership has a negative effect on the firm value. However, by using two measures of financial constraint, the investment cash flow sensitivity and the Kaplan and Zingales financial constraints index, the finding indicates that the existent of government ownership decreases financial constraint in firms. Also, the results show that the higher government ownership percentage the less financial constraint in firms. The second chapter studies the influence of specific company factors and the government ownership factor on capital structure. The finding shows that tangibility of assets and size have a positive association with leverage. Leverage is negatively correlated with growth and profitably. Finally, the results suggest that government ownership affects the level of leverage negatively.

Baker and Wurgler (2002) define a new theory of capital structure. In this theory capital structure evolves as the cumulative outcome of past attempts to time the equity market. Baker and Wurgler extend market timing theory to long-term capital structure, but their results do not clearly distinguish between the two versions of market timing: perceived mispricing and adverse selection. The main purpose of this dissertation is to empirically identify the relative importance of these two explanations. First, I retest Baker and Wurgler's theory by using insider trading as an alternative to market-to-book ratio to measure equity market timing. I also formally test the adverse selection model of the equity market timing: first by using post-issuance performance, and then by using three measures of adverse selection. The first two measures use estimates of adverse information costs based on the bid and ask prices, and the third measure is based on the close-to-offer returns. Based on received theory, a dynamic adverse selection model implies that higher adverse information costs lead to higher leverage. On the other hand, a naïve adverse selection model implies that negative inside information leads to lower leverage. The results are consistent with the equity market timing theory of capital structure. The results also indicate that a naïve, as opposed to a dynamic, adverse selection model seems to be the best explanation as to why managers time equity issues.

<p>I study the effect of human capital on firms' leverage decisions in a structural dynamic model. Firms produce using physical capital and labor. They pay a cost per employee they hire, thus investing in human capital. In default a portion of this human capital investment is lost. The loss of human capital constitutes a significant cost of financial distress. Labor intensive firms are more heavily exposed to this cost and respond by using less leverage. Thus the model predicts a decreasing relationship between leverage and labor intensity. Consistent with this prediction, I show in the data that high labor intensity leads to significantly less use of debt. In the model a move from the lowest to the highest decile of labor intensity is accompanied by a drop in leverage of 21 percentage points, very close to the 27 percentage point drop in the data. Overall, I argue that human capital has an important effect on firm leverage and should receive more attention from capital structure researchers.</p><p>Furthermore, I study a two-period contracting problem in which entrepreneurs need financing but have limited commitment. If an entrepreneur chooses to default, he can divert a proportion of the project's output. Entrepreneurs are heterogeneous with respect to their ability to divert output. In particular, I focus on the special case with only two types of entrepreneurs. "Opportunistic'' entrepreneurs can divert output, but "dependable'' entrepreneurs cannot. I find that, if the proportion of dependable entrepreneurs is sufficiently high, it is optimal to write contracts that induce second period default by the opportunistic entrepreneurs. This critical proportion generally decreases with the severity of the agency problem. The model delivers both cross-sectional and time-series predictions about default, investment, and output.</p> / Dissertation

This paper puts forward the hypothesis that the characteristics of followers of the pecking order theory of capital structure are explicitly distinct from those of non-followers. The factors determining financing behavior are far beyond the conventional perception of asymmetric information. Sampling from the IT industry in Taiwan, we observe that pecking order followers are associated with higher profitability, adequate cash, and other broadly recognized variables.

Abstract The finance literature offers two major models about the capital structure of a firm. In the tradeoff model, firms tradeoff the costs and benefits of borrowing to identify their optimal capital structure and gradually move towards it. On the contrast, firms do not have an optimal capital structure in the pecking order model. The moving of the capital structure is simply the result of the financing hierarchy: retained earnings, safe debt, risky debt, and finally equity. The purpose of this study is to test whether the public firms in Taiwan have optimal capital structure. We address the question with cross-section regressions. If the tradeoff exists, moving towards the optimal capital structure will explain the change of capital structure. On the other hand ,the deficit-in funds¡]DEF¡^will explain the change of capital structure when the pecking order model exists. The empirical result shows that the public firms in Taiwan have optimal capital structure, and their realized capital structures are moving towards it, but the speed of adjustment is quite slow.

¡@The decision of company¡¦s capital structure should depend on each company¡¦s characteristic and environment for determining the proper debt level. Nowadays, in the global environment, corporation has been affected by the global variables. In addition to the involvement of international activity for corporation, the factor of global environment will also strike the corporation¡¦s characteristic and operating. ¡@This study uses the electronics industry as sample, and the sample period is from 2000 to 2006. This study will be divided into three parts. First, separate global activity into two dimensions: operating and finance, and to build respective measurement indicator of the internationalization. Second, discuss how these two dimensions influencing on the financial characteristic and capital structure for company. Finally, explore whether the international factors of exchange rate risk and political risk will affect the corporation capital structure. ¡@As a result, this study discovers three main conclusions. First, the international activity variables such as operating and financial characteristics actually exist in the electronics industry. Corporation can diversify the operating risk and reduce the cost of bankruptcy through the international activity of operating, however, that also restricts the investment opportunity and reduces the debt¡¦s agency cost at the same time. In addition, we find that the international level of operating will affect corporation¡¦s capital structure significantly. But if we control the variables of capital structure theory such as size, bankruptcy cost, debt¡¦s agency cost and the earning ability, it will become insignificant. However, the international level of finance always has significant and positive effect on corporation¡¦s capital structure no matter do we control the variables of capital structure theory or not. Third, as for the international environment factors, exchange rate risk is significant and positive factor for capital structure, conversely, political risk is significant and negative factor. Finally, this study exhibits that the decision of company¡¦s capital structure should consider the international environment for each company.

The first essay tests whether Chapter 11 restructuring outcomes are affected by time constraints in busy bankruptcy courts. Using the passage of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act in 2005 as an exogenous shock to court caseloads, I estimate the impact of bankruptcy caseload changes on the outcomes of firms in Chapter 11. I find that as bankruptcy judges become busier they tend to allow more firms to reorganize. Firms that reorganize in busy courts spend longer in bankruptcy, while firms that are dismissed from busy courts are more likely to re-file for bankruptcy within three years of their original filing. In addition, busy courts impose costs on local banks, which report higher charge-offs on business lending when caseload increases. Using novel data that has complete coverage of claims for 136 Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filings and that includes detailed information on claims transfers, in the second essay we provide the first empirical insight on how a firm's ownership changes during the bankruptcy process and how these changes impact bankruptcy outcomes. Pre-bankruptcy ownership concentration is important for the coordination of a prearranged bankruptcy filing and is associated with a faster bankruptcy resolution and a higher likelihood of a successful reorganization. However, as the trading of claims in bankruptcy concentrates ownership further, the probability of liquidation increases and recovery rates decrease. The third essay studies whether prize-linked savings (PLS) accounts, which offer random, lottery-like payouts to account holders in lieu of risk-free interest, can aid individuals in increasing savings levels by adding the chance to "win big." Using micro-level data, we show that PLS is attractive to a broad group of individuals across all age, race, and income levels. We find that financially constrained individuals and those with no other deposit accounts are particularly likely to open a PLS account. Participants in the PLS program increased their total savings on average by 1.1% of annual income, a 31% increase form the mean level of savings. Deposits in PLS do not cannibalize savings in standard savings products. Instead, PLS appears to act as a substitute for lottery gambling.

I explore the passage of wrongful discharge laws by U.S. state courts that allow workers to sue employers for unjust dismissal as an exogenous increase in employee firing costs. I find that firms reduce debt ratios following the adoption of these laws, and this result is strongest for subsamples of firms that experience larger increases in expected firing costs. Following the passage of these laws, firms also increase cash holdings, firms save more cash out of cash flows, and investors place a higher value on each additional dollar of cash holdings. Overall, my results indicate that employee firing costs can have an important impact on corporate financial policy decisions.

Šio darbo tikslas įvertinti didelės, vidutinės, mažos kapitalizacijos listinguojamų įmonių kapitalo struktūros sprendimams įtaką darančių veiksnių poveikį. Vertinamas išorinių (akcijų rinkos kapitalizacija nuo BVP, parduotų akcijų vertės rodiklis, akcijų apyvartumo rodiklis) ir vidinių (įmonės dydis, turto grąža, likvidumas, augimo galimybės) veiksnių poveikis kapitalo struktūrai. Darbą sudaro trys dalys. Pirmoje darbo dalyje aptariam teoriniai įmonių kapitalo struktūros aspektai, taip pat apžvelgiami empiriniai tyrimai, kuriuose tiriama įvairių veiksnių įtaka kapitalo struktūrai. Antroje darbo dalyje pristatoma empirinio tyrimo metodologija. Trečioje darbo dalyje pristatomi atlikto skirtingos kapitalizacijos įmonių kapitalo struktūros veiksnių įtakos vertinimo tyrimo rezultatai. Tyrimas atskleidė, kad tarp didelės, vidutinės, mažos kapitalizacijos įmonių kapitalo struktūros ir išorinių bei vidinių veiksnių egzistuoja reikšminga tarpusavio priklausomybė. Nustatyta, kad didelės ir vidutinės kapitalizacijos įmonių kapitalo struktūros kintamumui didesnę įtaką daro vidiniai veiksniai. Taip pat pastebėta, kad iš tirtų vidinių veiksnių didžiausią įtaką turi likvidumas ir turto grąža. Tačiau, mažos kapitalizacijos įmonių kapitalo struktūrai didesnę įtaką daro išoriniai veiksniai. / Many research studies try to evaluate capital structure determinants influence on firm’s financial decisions. The aim of this study is to evaluate the influence of capital structure determinants on large, mid and small capitalization firm’s capital structure. The valuation includes both external and internal factors of the capital structure. This paper consists of three parts. The first part discusses the theoretical aspects of corporate capital structure, provides an overview of conducted empirical studies on the capital structure determinants. The second part presents this paper’s research empirical methodology. The third part of the paper presents empirical results of this research. Large and mid-capitalization firm’s capital structure is more influenced by internal factors. From all internal factors, ROA and liquidity are the factors that do the bigger impact on capital structure. However, small-cap firms are more influenced by external factors.