Economic policy uncertainty and capital structure choice: Evidence from China

Guangli Zhang, Jianlei Han, Zheyao Pan and Haozhi Huang

Economic Systems, 2015, vol. 39, issue 3, 439-457

Abstract: This paper studies how economic policy uncertainty affects corporate capital structure for Chinese listed firms from 2003 to 2013. We show that as the degree of economic policy uncertainty increases, firms tend to lower their leverage ratios. However, firms that are from regions with lower degrees of marketization, are state-owned or have prior bank-firm relationships mitigate the negative effect of policy uncertainty. Moreover, we provide consistent evidence that this negative effect is sourced from the deterioration of the external financing environment. We also find that firms adjust their financing structures by using more trade credit when economic policy uncertainty increases. Our results are robust to sample selection, data frequency, model specification and endogeneity.

Keywords: Economic policy uncertainty; Capital structure; Trade credit; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E66 G18 G32 G38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (82)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecosys:v:39:y:2015:i:3:p:439-457

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecosys.2015.06.003

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