Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/258682 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Citation: 
[Journal:] Journal of Risk and Financial Management [ISSN:] 1911-8074 [Volume:] 14 [Issue:] 12 [Article No.:] 579 [Publisher:] MDPI [Place:] Basel [Year:] 2021 [Pages:] 1-13
Publisher: 
MDPI, Basel
Abstract: 
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between a firm's capital structure (i.e., leverage) and its operating environment, taking into account firm (i.e., efficiency, asset structure, profitability, size, age and risk) and industry effects. For a sample of Greek pharmaceutical, cosmetic and detergent (PCD) enterprises, firm efficiency was estimated using bootstrapped data envelopment analysis (DEA), and a leverage model was produced using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. The findings confirm the significance of firm efficiency (i.e., the franchise-value hypothesis over the efficiency-risk hypothesis) and asset structure on leverage. Efficiency and overall and short-term leverage have a significant negative relationship, indicating that more efficient firms tend to choose a relatively low debt ratio. Pharma firms are more affected since they are less efficient than cosmetics and detergents firms. Furthermore, asset structure and short- and long- term leverage have a significant negative and positive relationship, respectively, indicating that the firms with more tangible assets have less short-term debt and more long-term debt in their capital structure. Cosmetic and detergent firms, which have slightly more tangible assets than pharma firms, appear to be able to substitute high-cost, short-term debt with the low-cost, long-term debt by using such assets as collateral.
Subjects: 
capital structure
firm efficiency
data envelopment analysis (DEA)
pharmaceutical
cosmetic and detergent (PCD) firms
Greece
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article

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