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Are the benefits of debt declining? The decreasing propensity of firms to be adequately levered

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  • D'Mello, Ranjan
  • Gruskin, Mark

Abstract

We observe a persistent increase in the percentage of firms with little or no debt in their capital structure over the last three decades. The fraction of firms with less than five percent debt in their capital structure increases from 14.01 percent in 1977 to 34.42 percent in 2010 while the percentage of all-equity firms increases 200 percent over the same period. We find that even after controlling for firm- and industry-specific variables that are relevant to capital structure policy, there is a deficiency in firms' propensity to be levered. Additionally, the deficiency is increasing over time and by 2010 the percent of firms that are nearly all-equity is twice the predicted level. Our findings are robust to different methodologies, specifications, and time periods. Overall, these results suggest that the well-documented benefits of leverage are less valuable over the sample period and that the determinants of firms' capital structure decisions have evolved since the 1970s.

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  • D'Mello, Ranjan & Gruskin, Mark, 2014. "Are the benefits of debt declining? The decreasing propensity of firms to be adequately levered," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 327-350.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:corfin:v:29:y:2014:i:c:p:327-350
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2014.09.008
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    Cited by:

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    2. Saona, Paolo & Vallelado, Eleuterio & San Martín, Pablo, 2020. "Debt, or not debt, that is the question: A Shakespearean question to a corporate decision," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 378-392.
    3. D’Mello, Ranjan & Gruskin, Mark, 2021. "To be or not to be all-equity for firms that eliminate long-term debt," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 183-206.
    4. Khoo, Joye & Durand, Robert B., 2017. "Japanese corporate leverage during the Lost Decades," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 46(PA), pages 94-108.
    5. Michael Espindola Araki & Henrique Castro Martins, 2022. "Integrating uncertainty and governance into a capital structure puzzle: can risk-taking and rule-taking explain zero-leverage firms?," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 16(6), pages 1979-2034, August.
    6. Morais, Flávio & Serrasqueiro, Zélia & Ramalho, Joaquim J.S., 2020. "The zero-leverage phenomenon: A bivariate probit with partial observability approach," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    7. Mateus Waga & Davi Valladão & Alexandre Street & Thuener Silva, 2022. "Disentangling Shareholder Risk Aversion from Leverage-Dependent Borrowing Cost on Corporate Policies," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 60(3), pages 1-24, October.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Leverage; Debt-free capital structure; All-equity firms;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G30 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - General
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • G34 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Mergers; Acquisitions; Restructuring; Corporate Governance

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