This thesis explores if Scandinavian publicly listed firms’ financial leverage was affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Whilst theory suggests that financial leverage is positively affected by uncertainty and reduced profitability, previous empirical research finds weak evidence of listed firms reducing financial leverage during crises. We follow the work by Demirgüç-Kunt, Martinez Peria and Tressel (2020) and D’Amato (2020) and run fixed effect panel data regression analyses. Our results are in line with the previous empirical studies regarding the financial crisis as we do not find significant change in means in financial leverage between the pre-pandemic period and the pandemic for listed firms. For our complete sample, we find that the pandemic had no significant impact on total debt to total assets but a significant impact on long-term debt to total assets. However, the results are varying amongst the countries. Therefore, further research is advised. We also find that, increases in growth opportunities, and profitability affect financial leverage negatively, whilst asset structure and firm size have positive effects on financial leverage. The results for liquidity are mixed. Overall, the findings are in line with previous research.

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Cette thèse contient trois études sur le fonctionnement des banques.<p>Le premier Chapitre analyse empiriquement comment la capacité d’offrir des emprunts à long terme est influencée par la dimension des intermédiaires financiers.<p>Le deuxième Chapitre analyse, avec un model théorique caractérisé par la présence de soft-budget constraint, ratchet effect et short-termism, comment la pression compétitive influence la capacité des banque de financer le firmes ayant des projets de bonne qualité.<p>Le troisième Chapitre examine, avec un model théorique du type moral hazard common agency, le conflits d'intérêts des banques universelles.<p><p>Financial intermediaries are recognized to promote the efficiency of resource allocation by mitigating problems of incentives, asymmetric information and contract incompleteness. The role played by financial intermediaries is considered so crucial that these institutions have received all over the world the greatest attention of regulators.<p>Across and within banking sectors it is possible to observe a wide variety of intermediaries. Banks may differ in their size, market power and degree of specialization. This variety raises interesting questions about the features of a well functioning banking sector. These questions have inspired an important body of economic literature which, however, is still inconclusive in many aspects. This dissertation includes three studies intending to contribute in this direction.<p>Chapter 1 will empirically study the willingness of smaller and larger lenders to grant long-term loans which, as credit to SME's, constitute an opaque segment of the credit market. Chapter 2 analyzes, with a theoretical model, the effects of competition on the efficiency of the banking sector when this is characterized by dynamic commitment issues which brings to excessive refinancing of bad quality investments (so called soft-budget constraint) or excessive termination of good ones (ratchet effect and short-termism). Chapter 3 presents a model to investigate to what extent the distortions posed by conflicts of interest in universal banks can be addressed through the provision of appropriate incentive schemes by the different categories of clients. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished