Do shareholder protection and creditor rights have distinct effects on the association between debt maturity and ownership structure?

Henrique Castro Martins, Eduardo Schiehll and Paulo Renato Soares Terra

Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, 2020, vol. 47, issue 5-6, 708-729

Abstract: This study examines the effects of the firm's ownership concentration and its institutional environment on corporate debt maturity choices. As ownership concentration and debt maturity are alternative governance mechanisms, we theorize and investigate whether their association is influenced by country‐level governance factors that enhance outside monitoring by minority shareholders and debtholders. Our investigation is based on a dataset of 50,599 firm‐year observations from 38 countries. We use a propensity‐score matching approach and find that the effect of ownership concentration on debt maturity is conditional to country‐level governance attributes. Ownership concentration has a negative effect on debt maturity in countries where both shareholder protection and creditor rights are weak. Ownership concentration, however, tends to lengthen debt maturity as protection increases, and this positive effect on the length of debt maturity is stronger in countries enhancing protection towards debtholders (instead of shareholders). We also explore other characteristics of ownership structure, such as the identity and presence of controlling shareholders. These results corroborate the view that entrenched shareholders may use debt maturity opportunistically. Our study provides new insights into the interplay between firm‐ and country‐level governance mechanisms and a deeper understanding of cross‐country differences in the association between ownership structure and debt financing.

Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/jbfa.12430

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jbfnac:v:47:y:2020:i:5-6:p:708-729

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0306-686X

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Finance & Accounting is currently edited by P. F. Pope, A. W. Stark and M. Walker

More articles in Journal of Business Finance & Accounting from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().