Determinants of Capital Structure of Korea Listed Firms

우리나라 상장기업(上場企業)의 자본구조(資本構造) 결정요인(決定要因)에 관한 연구(硏究)

The Purpose of this study is to test empirically the determinants of capital structure of the Korea Listed Firms. In order to accomplish the purpose of this study, both literature survey and empirical test have been made. For the empirical test, agency and asymmetric information factors as well as traditional ones have been throughly reviewed. Traditional factors tested in this study include firm-size, collateral value of the assets, business risk, tax, non-debt tax shields, and industry effects. Agency and asymmetric information factors include growth opportunities, the percentage of outstanding equity held by inside stockholders, and the number of inside stockholders. From the results of the cross-sectional regression analysis, the adjusted R-square is 1931%, and the overall F-value indicates significance. For the analysis period, the signs of the variables except business risk are as predicted. Firm-size, collateral value of the assets, and business risk significant at the.01-.05 level. In order to determine the influence of industry factors on the financial leverage, a total of 8 dummy variables are added to the regression model. The adjusted R-square inclosed by 4.2% for the first analysis period(1983-1985) and 6% for the second analysis period(1986-1987). This suggests that industry factors are significant in explaining the variations in financial leverage across firms. In order to pursue the influence of agency and asymmetric information factors on the financial leverage, again the cross-sectional regression analysis is done for the middle size firms gruop(n=40). The adjusted R-square increased by 9.8% for the first analysis period(1983-1985) and 6.1% for the total analysis period(1983-1987), and all the signs was as predicted. But both the variables except the number of inside stockholders was not significant.