Using a large sample of U.S. financial institutions between 2000-2007, this paper documents that the distance from the target capital structure helps explain several capital structure adjustments. First, financial institutions which are either over-leveraged or under-capitalized with respect to...

The paper investigates the existence of a pecking order in new technology-based firms (NTBFs) financing, and provides an evidence on factors determining what source of capital NTBFs try to access. The authors pay particular attention to aspects of human capital such as age, education and...

In this paper, we evaluate firm-, industry- and country-specific factors determining a firm's capital structure. The empirical validity of several capital structure theories has been ambiguous so far. We shed light on the main drivers of leverage and depict differences in industry and country...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the stochastic behavior of corporate debt ratios utilizing a balanced panel of 2,556 publicly traded US firms during the period 1997 - 2010. We partition the panel into ten economic sectors and perform panel unit root tests on each sector employing...

The inverse relation between leverage and profitability is widely regarded as a serious defect of the tradeoff theory. We show that the defect is not with the theory but with the use of a leverage ratio in which profitability affects both the numerator and the denominator. Profitability directly...

Understanding financial strategies and patterns of new firms is crucial to the theoretical unraveling of the entrepreneurial process as well as to the elaboration of appropriate support programs from practitioner and policy maker. The aim of this paper is to investigate whether a pecking order...