 Life Cycle Theory of the Capital Structure: Evidence from Tunisian SMEsYoussef Walid () Asian Economic and Financial Review, 2019, vol. 9, issue 4, 432-449 Abstract: Empirical research on the financing of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has focused mainly on theoretical approaches related to hierarchical order and, to a lesser extent, on trade-off theory. However, the financial literature has recently revealed that the life-cycle stages of SMEs influence their financial choices, which may explain why business financing evolves over time. Thus, this paper used a panel data approach to study the impact of life cycle phases on the capital structure of 70 Tunisian industrial SMEs during the period from 2013 to 2016. We found that Tunisian SMEs tended to use debt more intensively in the short term, while long-term debt was rarely used. We also found that the life cycle theory is perfectly adapted to describe the financial behavior adopted by Tunisian SMEs, which tend to use debt (regardless of maturity) during the early life cycle phases. Once SMEs age and mature, other sources of funding take over (mainly self-financing and even an IPO). Keywords: Capital structure; Life cycle theory; Financing decisions; Small and medium sized; enterprises (SME); Panel regression; Fixed-effects. (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:asi:aeafrj:v:9:y:2019:i:4:p:432-449:id:1812 Access Statistics for this article More articles in Asian Economic and Financial Review from Asian Economic and Social Society |
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