IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/apfiec/v20y2010i3p219-226.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

To have a target debt ratio or not: what difference does it make?

Author

Listed:
  • Abe de Jong
  • Patrick Verwijmeren

Abstract

The static tradeoff theory of capital structure predicts that firms aim to approach a target debt ratio. The theory provides several firm characteristics that determine this target ratio. In contrast, the pecking order model rejects a target debt ratio, because firms are expected to finance investments subsequently from (internal) equity, debt and (external) equity. A fundamental problem in empirical studies is that having a target debt ratio or not is unobservable from public data. We use survey evidence from 235 Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) to discriminate static tradeoff firms from pecking order firms and relate the responses to public data. For the two sets of firms we estimate standard capital structure models and find that pecking order firms contaminate static tradeoff theory-based estimations.

Suggested Citation

  • Abe de Jong & Patrick Verwijmeren, 2010. "To have a target debt ratio or not: what difference does it make?," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(3), pages 219-226.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:apfiec:v:20:y:2010:i:3:p:219-226
    DOI: 10.1080/09603100903282671
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09603100903282671
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09603100903282671?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stewart C. Myers & Nicholas S. Majluf, 1984. "Corporate Financing and Investment Decisions When Firms Have InformationThat Investors Do Not Have," NBER Working Papers 1396, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Myers, Stewart C. & Majluf, Nicholas S., 1984. "Corporate financing and investment decisions when firms have information that investors do not have," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 187-221, June.
    3. Kamath, Ravindra R, 1997. "Long-Term Financing Decisions: Views and Practices of Financial Managers of NYSE Firms," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 32(2), pages 331-356, May.
    4. Flannery, Mark J. & Rangan, Kasturi P., 2006. "Partial adjustment toward target capital structures," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(3), pages 469-506, March.
    5. Vivien Beattie & Alan Goodacre & Sarah Jane Thomson, 2006. "Corporate Financing Decisions: UK Survey Evidence," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(9‐10), pages 1402-1434, November.
    6. Rajan, Raghuram G & Zingales, Luigi, 1995. "What Do We Know about Capital Structure? Some Evidence from International Data," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(5), pages 1421-1460, December.
    7. Frank, Murray Z. & Goyal, Vidhan K., 2003. "Testing the pecking order theory of capital structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 217-248, February.
    8. Brounen, Dirk & de Jong, Abe & Koedijk, Kees, 2006. "Capital structure policies in Europe: Survey evidence," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(5), pages 1409-1442, May.
    9. Graham, John R. & Harvey, Campbell R., 2001. "The theory and practice of corporate finance: evidence from the field," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2-3), pages 187-243, May.
    10. Chirinko, Robert S. & Singha, Anuja R., 2000. "Testing static tradeoff against pecking order models of capital structure: a critical comment," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 417-425, December.
    11. A. Panno, 2003. "An empirical investigation on the determinants of capital structure: the UK and Italian experience," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(2), pages 97-112.
    12. Vivien Beattie & Alan Goodacre & Sarah Jane Thomson, 2006. "Corporate Financing Decisions: UK Survey Evidence," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(9-10), pages 1402-1434.
    13. Myers, Stewart C., 1984. "Capital structure puzzle," Working papers 1548-84., Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
    14. Myers, Stewart C, 1984. "The Capital Structure Puzzle," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 39(3), pages 575-592, July.
    15. Stewart C. Myers, 1984. "Capital Structure Puzzle," NBER Working Papers 1393, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shab Hundal & Annika Sandstrom & Assel Uskumbayeva, 2018. "The Impact Of The Financial Crisis On Corporate Capital Structure Dynamics In The Nordic Countries," Eurasian Journal of Economics and Finance, Eurasian Publications, vol. 6(3), pages 34-51.
    2. Chauhan, Gaurav Singh & Huseynov, Fariz, 2018. "Corporate financing and target behavior: New tests and evidence," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 840-856.
    3. Daniel Arce & Douglas Cook & Robert Kieschnick, 2015. "On the evolution of corporate capital structures," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 25(3), pages 561-583, July.
    4. Lambert H. de Wet & Sean Joss Gossel, 2016. "South African Capital Structure Decisions: A Survey of Listed Companies," Journal of African Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(2), pages 167-187, May.
    5. Brown, Stephen & Dutordoir, Marie & Veld, Chris & Veld-Merkoulova, Yulia, 2019. "What is the role of institutional investors in corporate capital structure decisions? A survey analysis," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 270-286.
    6. Ralf Diedrich & Stefan Dierkes & Hans-Christian Gröger, 2022. "A note on the cost of capital with fixed payout ratios," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 59(4), pages 1559-1575, November.
    7. Unyong Pyo & Yong Shin & Howard Thompson, 2015. "Reducing agency conflicts with target debt ratios," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 39(3), pages 431-453, July.
    8. Stefan Dierkes & Imke de Maeyer, 2020. "Valuation with mixed financing strategies," Business Research, Springer;German Academic Association for Business Research, vol. 13(3), pages 1317-1341, November.

    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. Mai, Nhat Chi, 2012. "Market timing, taxes and capital structure: evidence from Vietnam," OSF Preprints t3mvs, Center for Open Science.
    2. Akbar, Saeed & Rehman, Shafiq ur & Liu, Jia & Shah, Syed Zulfiqar Ali, 2017. "Credit supply constraints and financial policies of listed companies during the 2007–2009 financial crisis," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 559-571.
    3. Boyd, John H. & Jalal, Abu M., 2012. "A new measure of financial development: Theory leads measurement," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(2), pages 341-357.
    4. Mei Qiu & Bo La, 2010. "Firm Characteristics as Determinants of Capital Structures in Australia," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(3), pages 277-287.
    5. Chauhan, Gaurav Singh & Huseynov, Fariz, 2018. "Corporate financing and target behavior: New tests and evidence," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 840-856.
    6. Elsas, Ralf & Florysiak, David, 2008. "Empirical Capital Structure Research: New Ideas, Recent Evidence, and Methodological Issues," Discussion Papers in Business Administration 4743, University of Munich, Munich School of Management.
    7. Elliott, William B. & Koeter-Kant, Johanna & Warr, Richard S., 2007. "A valuation-based test of market timing," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 112-128, March.
    8. Andres, Christian & Cumming, Douglas & Karabiber, Timur & Schweizer, Denis, 2014. "Do markets anticipate capital structure decisions? — Feedback effects in equity liquidity," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 133-156.
    9. Sjur Westgaard & Amund Eidet & Stein Frydenberg & Thor Christian Grosås, 2008. "Investigating the Capital Structure of UK Real Estate Companies," Journal of Property Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(1), pages 61-87, August.
    10. Andrew Benito, 2003. "The capital structure decisions of firms: is there a pecking order?," Working Papers 0310, Banco de España.
    11. Surenderrao Komera & Jijo Lukose P.J., 2015. "Capital structure choice, information asymmetry, and debt capacity: evidence from India," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 39(4), pages 807-823, October.
    12. Allini, Alessandra & Rakha, Soliman & McMillan, David G. & Caldarelli, Adele, 2018. "Pecking order and market timing theory in emerging markets: The case of Egyptian firms," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 297-308.
    13. Chen, Dar-Hsin & Chen, Chun-Da & Chen, Jianguo & Huang, Yu-Fang, 2013. "Panel data analyses of the pecking order theory and the market timing theory of capital structure in Taiwan," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 1-13.
    14. Mohamed Soufeljil & Asma Sghaier & Zouhayer Mighri & Hanène Kheireddine, 2017. "The financial structure of the Tunisian listed businesses: an application on panel data," Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research, Springer;UNESCO Chair in Entrepreneurship, vol. 7(1), pages 1-25, December.
    15. Leary, Mark T. & Roberts, Michael R., 2010. "The pecking order, debt capacity, and information asymmetry," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(3), pages 332-355, March.
    16. M. E. Bontempi & L. Bottazzi & R. Golinelli, 2015. "Dynamic corporate capital structure behavior: empirical assessment in the light of heterogeneity and non stationarity," Working Papers wp988, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    17. Eric Molay, 2005. "La structure financière du capital:tests empiriques sur le marché français," Revue Finance Contrôle Stratégie, revues.org, vol. 8(4), pages 153-175, December.
    18. Vodwal, Sandeep & Bansal, Vishakha & Sinha, Pankaj, 2019. "Impact of Financial Crisis on Determinants of Capital Structure of Indian Non-financial Firms: Estimating Dynamic Panel Data Model using Two-Step System GMM," MPRA Paper 95482, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Kayhan, Ayla & Titman, Sheridan, 2007. "Firms' histories and their capital structures," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 1-32, January.
    20. Shoaib Ali & Attiya Yasmin Javid, 2015. "Relationship between Credit Rating, Capital Structure and Earning Management Behaviour: Evidence from Pakistani Listed Firms," PIDE-Working Papers 2015:121, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:taf:apfiec:v:20:y:2010:i:3:p:219-226. 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAFE20 .

    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.