Generalized trust, personalized trust, and dynamics of capital structure: Evidence from China

Changyuan Xia, Kam C. Chan, Chunfang Cao and Youchao Tan

China Economic Review, 2021, vol. 68, issue C

Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of social trust on a firm's adjustment speed toward an optimal capital structure. Leveraging the availability of generalized trust and personalized trust metrics in China, we find that, as expected, when a firm is located in a high social trust region (with either generalized or personalized trust), it adjusts more quickly toward its target capital structure. Moreover, we document that the impact of generalized trust (personalized trust) on the adjustment speed is magnified if the firm already had stringent financial constraints (less-severe agency problems) but it is not related to the severity of a firm's agency problems (financial constraints). Additional analysis suggests that the impact of social trust on capital structure dynamics is primarily through debt rather than equity. Furthermore, we find that when a firm is located in a weak formal institutional environment, the impact of generalized trust on the adjustment speed strengthens, suggesting that formal institutions and generalized trust are partial substitutes. Interestingly, the substitution effect of formal institutions and personalized trust is weak. Hence, the impact of generalized trust and personalized trust on capital structure adjustment share some similarities but differ in other respects.

Keywords: Social trust; Dynamics of capital structure; Financial constraints; Corporate governance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1043951X21000584
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:chieco:v:68:y:2021:i:c:s1043951x21000584

DOI: 10.1016/j.chieco.2021.101640

Access Statistics for this article

China Economic Review is currently edited by B.M. Fleisher, K. X. D. Huang, M.E. Lovely, Y. Wen, X. Zhang and X. Zhu

More articles in China Economic Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().