IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/liu/liucej/v16y2019i2p207-237.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Financial leverage and firm performance: evidence from Amman stock exchange

Author

Listed:
  • Bassam M. Abu-Abbas, Turki Alhmoud, Fatima A. Algazo

Abstract

This study tests the relationship between financial leverage and firm performance. Previous studies found mixed results (e.g., Gill et al. 2011, Mouna et al. 2017, and Abubaker (2015). Some suggest including the effect of the firms’ business strategy and the degree of competitiveness on the relationship between the financial leverage and the firms’ performance. Data is subjected to pooled General Least Square to test the hypotheses of the study. Based on a sample from Amman Stock Exchange, the study finds that the financial leverage has a negative relationship with the firm performance proxies by ROA and EVA. In addition, the relationship between financial leverage and performance is more negative for the firms that use product differentiation strategy compared with the firms that use low-cost strategy and for the firms with a high degree of competitiveness compared with the firms with a low degree of competitiveness. Different tests including the Wald F-test on the linear restrictions support confirm the above conclusions. Different diagnostic tests show that the results are reliable, free from autocorrelation, robust, and not affected by multicollinearity.

Suggested Citation

  • Bassam M. Abu-Abbas, Turki Alhmoud, Fatima A. Algazo, 2019. "Financial leverage and firm performance: evidence from Amman stock exchange," European Journal of Comparative Economics, Cattaneo University (LIUC), vol. 16(2), pages 207-237, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:liu:liucej:v:16:y:2019:i:2:p:207-237
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ejce.liuc.it/18242979201902/182429792019160203.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jeremy C. Short & David J. Ketchen & Timothy B. Palmer & G. Tomas M. Hult, 2007. "Firm, strategic group, and industry influences on performance," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(2), pages 147-167, February.
    2. Thorburn, Craig, 2008. "Insurers : too many, too few, or"just right"? initial observations on a cross-country dataset of concentration and competition measures," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4578, The World Bank.
    3. Judith Jordan & Julian Lowe & Peter Taylor, 1998. "Strategy and Financial Policy in UK Small Firms," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(1‐2), pages 1-27, January.
    4. Gorton, Gary & Rosen, Richard, 1995. "Corporate Control, Portfolio Choice, and the Decline of Banking," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(5), pages 1377-1420, December.
    5. Mara Grasseni, 2010. "Domestic Multinationals and Foreign-Owned Firms in Italy: Evidence from Quantile Regression," European Journal of Comparative Economics, Cattaneo University (LIUC), vol. 7(1), pages 61-86, June.
    6. Felicia Olokoyo, 2013. "Capital Structure and Corporate Performance of Nigerian Quoted Firms: A Panel Data Approach," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 25(3), pages 358-369.
    7. Maksimovic, Vojislav & Titman, Sheridan, 1991. "Financial Policy and Reputation for Product Quality," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 4(1), pages 175-200.
    8. Chevalier, Judith A, 1995. "Capital Structure and Product-Market Competition: Empirical Evidence from the Supermarket Industry," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(3), pages 415-435, June.
    9. Eugene F. Fama, 2002. "Testing Trade-Off and Pecking Order Predictions About Dividends and Debt," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 15(1), pages 1-33, March.
    10. Jermias, Johnny, 2008. "The relative influence of competitive intensity and business strategy on the relationship between financial leverage and performance," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 71-86.
    11. Brander, James A. & Lewis, Tracy R., 1986. "Oligopoly and Financial Structure: The Limited Liability Effect," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(5), pages 956-970, December.
    12. Felicia Omowunmi Olokoyo, 2013. "Capital Structure and Corporate Performance of Nigerian Quoted Firms: A Panel Data Approach," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 25(3), pages 358-369, September.
    13. Wanzenried, Gabrielle, 2003. "Capital structure decisions and output market competition under demand uncertainty," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 171-200, February.
    14. Jensen, Michael C. & Meckling, William H., 1976. "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 305-360, October.
    15. Danny Miller, 1987. "The structural and environmental correlates of business strategy," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 8(1), pages 55-76, January.
    16. George Geronikolaou, 2015. "On the Effect of Market Share Dispersion on New Firm Entry," International Advances in Economic Research, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 21(3), pages 287-298, August.
    17. Paul A. Phillips & Mehmet A. Sipahioglu, 2004. "Performance implications of capital structure: evidence from quoted UK organisations with hotel interests," The Service Industries Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(5), pages 31-51, September.
    18. Mehran, Hamid, 1995. "Executive compensation structure, ownership, and firm performance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 163-184, June.
    19. Jensen, Michael C, 1986. "Agency Costs of Free Cash Flow, Corporate Finance, and Takeovers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(2), pages 323-329, May.
    20. William Ruland & Ping Zhou, 2005. "Debt, Diversification, and Valuation," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 25(3), pages 277-291, November.
    21. Chevalier, Judith A & Scharfstein, David S, 1996. "Capital-Market Imperfections and Countercyclical Markups: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(4), pages 703-725, September.
    22. King, Michael R. & Santor, Eric, 2008. "Family values: Ownership structure, performance and capital structure of Canadian firms," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(11), pages 2423-2432, November.
    23. Demsetz, Harold & Lehn, Kenneth, 1985. "The Structure of Corporate Ownership: Causes and Consequences," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(6), pages 1155-1177, December.
    24. Nabila Nisha & Bikramaditya Ghosh, 2018. "Causal relationship between leverage and performance: exploring Dhaka Stock Exchange," International Journal of Business and Globalisation, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 20(1), pages 31-49.
    25. Krishnan, V. Sivarama & Moyer, R. Charles, 1997. "Performance, capital structure and home country: An analysis of Asian corporations," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 129-143.
    26. Curry, B & George, K D, 1983. "Industrial Concentration: A Survey," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(3), pages 203-255, March.
    27. Eric Nauenberg & Kisalaya Basu & Harish Chand, 1997. "Hirschman-Herfindahl index determination under incomplete information," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(10), pages 639-642.
    28. Myers, Stewart C., 1977. "Determinants of corporate borrowing," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 147-175, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fosu, Samuel, 2013. "Capital structure, product market competition and firm performance: Evidence from South Africa," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(2), pages 140-151.
    2. Samuel Fosu, 2013. "Capital Structure, Product Market Competition and Firm Performance: Evidence from South Africa," Discussion Papers in Economics 13/11, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.
    3. Saurabh Chadha & Anil K. Sharma, 2015. "Capital Structure and Firm Performance: Empirical Evidence from India," Vision, , vol. 19(4), pages 295-302, December.
    4. Murray Z. Frank & Vidhan K. Goyal, 2009. "Capital Structure Decisions: Which Factors Are Reliably Important?," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 38(1), pages 1-37, March.
    5. Abdulaziz Istaitieh & José M. Rodríguez‐Fernández, 2006. "Factor‐product markets and firm's capital structure: A literature review," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 15(1), pages 49-75.
    6. T. Franck & N. Huyghebaert, 2004. "On the Interactions between Capital Structure and Product Markets.A Survey of the Literature," Review of Business and Economic Literature, KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Review of Business and Economic Literature, vol. 0(4), pages 727-787.
    7. Yu-Yen Ku & Tze-Yu Yen, 2016. "Heterogeneous Effect of Financial Leverage on Corporate Performance: A Quantile Regression Analysis of Taiwanese Companies," Review of Pacific Basin Financial Markets and Policies (RPBFMP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 19(03), pages 1-33, September.
    8. Albert Danso & Samuel Fosu & Samuel Owusu‐Agyei & Collins G. Ntim & Emmanuel Adegbite, 2021. "Capital structure revisited. Do crisis and competition matter in a Keiretsu corporate structure?," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(4), pages 5073-5092, October.
    9. Istaitieh, Abdulaziz & Rodriguez-Fernandez, Jose M., 2006. "Factor-product markets and firm's capital structure: A literature review," Review of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 49-75.
    10. ElBannan, Mona A., 2017. "Stock market liquidity, family ownership, and capital structure choices in an emerging country," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 201-231.
    11. Berger, Allen N. & Bonaccorsi di Patti, Emilia, 2006. "Capital structure and firm performance: A new approach to testing agency theory and an application to the banking industry," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 1065-1102, April.
    12. Doocheol Moon & Kishore Tandon, 2007. "The influence of growth opportunities on the relationship between equity ownership and leverage," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 29(4), pages 339-351, November.
    13. Xu, Jin, 2012. "Profitability and capital structure: Evidence from import penetration," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(2), pages 427-446.
    14. Ulrich Hege, 2010. "Acquisition Values and Optimal Financial (In)Flexibility," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(7), pages 2865-2899, July.
    15. Maria Psillaki & Nikolaos Daskalakis, 2009. "Are the determinants of capital structure country or firm specific?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 33(3), pages 319-333, October.
    16. Federico Etro, 2010. "Endogenous market structures and the optimal financial structure," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 43(4), pages 1333-1352, November.
    17. Jermias, Johnny, 2008. "The relative influence of competitive intensity and business strategy on the relationship between financial leverage and performance," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 71-86.
    18. Bradley W. Benson & Wallace N. Davidson III & Hongxia Wang & Dan L. Worrell, 2011. "Deviations from Expected Stakeholder Management, Firm Value, and Corporate Governance," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 40(1), pages 39-81, March.
    19. Vu Tuan Chu & Trang Hanh Lam Pham, 2021. "Zero leverage and product market competition," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 1(4), pages 1-18, April.
    20. Quan-Hoang Vuong, 2014. "Operational scales, sources of finance, and firms’ performance: evidence from Vietnamese longitudinal data," Working Papers CEB 14-017, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:liu:liucej:v:16:y:2019:i:2:p:207-237. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Laura Ballestra (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/liuccit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.