On the interaction between the investment and financing decision: An extension and empirical test of the Williamson specificity hypothesis.

This dissertation has a twofold objective: to extend the Williamson asset specificity hypothesis and to empirically test both the asset specificity hypothesis and the extension. The Williamson asset specificity hypothesis asserts that the financial leverage used by firms is a function of the specificity of the assets owned by the firm when asset specificity is defined as the readiness with which assets can be re-deployed. This results from a governance argument whereby highly specific assets can only be governed by increased equity participation. This argument is extended with the assertion that increased specificity causes operating leverage to rise and that firms counter this increased operating leverage by decreasing the financial leverage they employ.