Firm Internationalization and Capital Structure in Developing Countries: The Role of Financial Development

Halit Gonenc and Daniel J. de Haan

Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, 2014, vol. 50, issue 2, 169-189

Abstract: We investigate the relationship between internationalization and the level of debt financing for more than 18,000 firm/year observations from thirty-one developing countries in the period 1991-2006. We argue that this relationship can be affected by both country-level and firm-level factors. The results show that in developing countries with relatively higher financial development, firm internationalization corresponds with a greater level of debt when firms have more growth opportunities (which also indicate a higher level of asymmetric information). This evidence suggests that relatively developed financial markets in developing countries at least partially mitigate the effect of asymmetric information and decrease the agency cost of debt for firms with higher levels of internationalization.

Keywords: agency cost of debt; capital structure; developing countries; financial development; firm internationalization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://mesharpe.metapress.com/link.asp?target=contribution&id=210H76113372W642 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:mes:emfitr:v:50:y:2014:i:2:p:169-189

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/MREE20

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Emerging Markets Finance and Trade from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().