This paper examines the effects of country-level governance—such as voice and accountability, political stability, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, and control of corruption—on the capital structure and investment financing decisions of firms. The full sample consists of 31,749 firms in 65 countries between 1996 and 2017. We find that firms operating in countries with stronger governance decrease their leverage while increasing their debt maturity. Specifically, we show that they decrease their reliance on short-term debt issuance while they increase their reliance on long-term debt and equity issuances in financing capital expenditures. Our findings are robust to endogeneity issues and alternative model specifications.

本文研究了国家层面的治理——例如话语权和问责制、政治稳定性、政府效率、监管质量、法治和腐败控制——对公司资本结构和投资融资决策的影响。完整样本由 1996 年至 2017 年间 65 个国家的 31,749 家公司组成。我们发现，在治理更强的国家经营的公司降低了杠杆率，同时增加了债务期限。具体来说，我们表明他们减少了对短期债务发行的依赖，同时增加了对长期债务和股票发行的依赖，以资助资本支出。我们的研究结果对内生性问题和替代模型规范是稳健的。