Financial leverage and export quality: Evidence from France

Michele Bernini, Sarah Guillou and Flora Bellone ()

Journal of Banking & Finance, 2015, vol. 59, issue C, 280-296

Abstract: Does corporate financial structure matter for a firm’s ability to compete in international markets through output quality? This study answers this question by using firm-level export and balance sheet data covering a large sample of French manufacturing exporters over the period 1997–2007. The main result is that there is a negative causal relation between a firm’s leverage and export quality, where quality is inferred from the estimation of a discrete choice model of foreign consumers’ demand. This result is robust across different specifications and estimation techniques. In addition, by estimating investment models we find that the negative impact of leverage on quality is consistent with theories predicting that the agency cost of debt determines suboptimal investment.

Keywords: Capital structure; Investment; Output quality; Exports (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F14 G11 G32 L11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:59:y:2015:i:c:p:280-296

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbankfin.2015.06.014

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