Determinants of capital structure - Evidence from Shari'ah compliant and non-compliant firms

Ramazan Yildirim, Abul Masih and Obiyathulla Bacha

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Many Muslim individual and institutional investors seek to invest only in stocks that are compliant with the Shari'ah (i.e. Islamic law). Among others, Dow Jones addressed this demand and has developed their proprietary screening methodologies to identify Shari'ah compliant firms (SC). One key factor that distinguishes SC firms from their non compliant peers (SNC) is that the former is not allowed to cross the leverage threshold of 33%. Due to the restrictions imposed on them, it is expected that SC firms exhibit different capital structure compared to the SNC firms. The purpose of this initial comparative study is to analyze the most reliable debt determinants identified in the literature on both firm types. This study utilizes static panel data techniques on the sample consisting of SC and SNC firms from 7 countries and 7 industries over the years 2004–2014. Our study is inconclusive and it shows that most of the determinants do exhibit different effects among both firm types. Depending on the leverage measure, the effect of different independent variables on firms' capital structure varies. A uniform effect can be exerted for debt determinants profitability for both leverage measures, and growth opportunities, firm size and tangibility for market leverage only. Our robustness tests reveal that the impact of some debt determinants on firms leverage remains consistent. The coefficient sign and significance suggests, that the capital structure decision of both firm types, both are better explained by the Pecking Order Theory for book and by the Trade-Off Theory for market leverage, respectively.

Keywords: Capital Structure; Leverage; Shariah Compliant; Shariah Screening; Trade-Off Theory; Pecking Order Theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C58 E44 G15 G32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-06-05, Revised 2018-05-26
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cfn, nep-isf, nep-mac and nep-sbm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/90280/1/MPRA_paper_90280.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Determinants of capital structure: evidence from Shari'ah compliant and non-compliant firms (2018)
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:pra:mprapa:90280

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().