Purpose

This study investigates if the widely held predictors of corporate leverage exhibit predictive consistency through times and across countries amidst country heterogeneities such as legal principles, state of economic development and protection of investors’ rights.

Design/methodology/approach

We employ financial data for 3,197 unique firms from eight emerging and ten developed countries during the years 2001–2017 and use Tobit regression models, a two-step Fama−MacBeth(1973) regression and panel data regression techniques in order to ensure the robustness of estimates.

Findings

We find that firms in the civil French law system exhibit the highest average of a debt (around 27%), whereas firms based in high investors’ protection environment and in developed nations borrow significantly less than their counterparts. Furthermore, among predictors, including a firm's payout ratio, it returns on equity and the cash ratio except the P/B ratio have varying predictability for a corporate debt when firms are classified based on law systems, investors’ rights and the economic scenarios. The crisis period significantly affects the relationship of debt levels with legal systems, investors’ rights and economic development scenario. The author’s estimates are robust to alternate analysis.

Originality/value

This study is unique in its methodological approach and involves a considerably large number of countries and a longer study period for the results to be more generalizable compared to other existing studies.

中文翻译：

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上市公司债务水平分析：国际证据

目的

本研究调查广泛持有的企业杠杆预测指标是否在不同时期和不同国家在法律原则、经济发展状况和投资者权利保护等国家异质性中表现出预测一致性。

设计/方法/方法

我们在 2001 年至 2017 年期间使用了来自八个新兴国家和十个发达国家的 3,197 家独特公司的财务数据，并使用 Tobit 回归模型、两步 Fama-MacBeth(1973) 回归和面板数据回归技术，以确保稳健性估计。

发现

我们发现法国大陆法系公司的债务平均水平最高（约 27%），而位于投资者保护环境高和发达国家的公司的借款明显少于同行。此外，在包括公司派息率在内的预测因素中，当根据法律制度、投资者权利和经济情景对公司进行分类时，除市净率外，股本回报率和现金比率对公司债务具有不同的可预测性。危机时期显着影响债务水平与法律制度、投资者权利和经济发展情景的关系。作者的估计对于替代分析是可靠的。

原创性/价值

这项研究的方法论方法是独一无二的，与其他现有研究相比，涉及相当多的国家和更长的研究周期，因此结果更具普遍性。