IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/oaefxx/v8y2020i1p1821482.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The effect of economic policy uncertainty and herding on leverage: An examination of the BRICS countries

Author

Listed:
  • Prudence Makololo
  • Yudhvir Seetharam
  • David McMillan

Abstract

This study examines the role of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) in influencing firm performance and leverage as a form of financing decisions, in the presence of herding in the emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS). This study contributes to our understanding of how businesses in emerging markets make financial decisions during uncertain times as well as the role of policy development in influencing firm performance and corporate decisions. The increase or decrease in EPU is determined by the way policymakers or investors act and the consequences of their decisions. EPU is, in fact, a market characteristic that brings changes in prices and returns. Therefore, investors and policymakers should be aware of it to prevent any negative effects. A steady and predictable economic policy is critical to economic growth. We investigate how firms rationalise making leverage financing decisions during times of economic policy uncertainty and if so, if herding is present in these decisions. Our data spans the Top 80 listed firms in each respective country from the beginning of June 2002 to the end of June 2017. Russian, Indian and South African results show that EPU is significant in determining leverage financing decisions and that an increase in EPU leads to herding in such decisions. We find contrary results in Brazilian and Chinese firms. Our results imply that when leverage decisions are made, both the political climate as well as competitor movement data must be considered in determining a firm’s “ideal” capital structure.

Suggested Citation

  • Prudence Makololo & Yudhvir Seetharam & David McMillan, 2020. "The effect of economic policy uncertainty and herding on leverage: An examination of the BRICS countries," Cogent Economics & Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(1), pages 1821482-182, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:oaefxx:v:8:y:2020:i:1:p:1821482
    DOI: 10.1080/23322039.2020.1821482
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/23322039.2020.1821482
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/23322039.2020.1821482?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.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Wen, Jun & Khalid, Samia & Mahmood, Hamid & Zakaria, Muhammad, 2021. "Symmetric and asymmetric impact of economic policy uncertainty on food prices in China: A new evidence," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    2. Bilal Haider Subhani & Umar Farooq & M. Ishaq Bhatti & Muhammad Asif Khan, 2021. "Economic Policy Uncertainty, National Culture, and Corporate Debt Financing," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(20), pages 1-15, October.
    3. Bakhsh, Satar & Zhang, Wei, 2023. "How does natural resource price volatility affect economic performance? A threshold effect of economic policy uncertainty," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    4. Oluwasegun B. Adekoya & Johnson A. Oliyide, 2021. "Business confidence as a strong tracker of future growth: is it driven by economic policy uncertainty and oil price shocks in the OECD countries?," Future Business Journal, Springer, vol. 7(1), pages 1-13, December.
    5. Almeida, José & Gaio, Cristina & Gonçalves, Tiago Cruz, 2024. "Crypto market relationships with bric countries' uncertainty – A wavelet-based approach," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    6. Nick Vink, 2022. "African agricultural development: How are we contributing?," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 53(4), pages 540-562, July.

    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:oaefxx:v:8:y:2020:i:1:p:1821482. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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/OAEF20 .

    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.