This study explores the significance of firm-specific, institutional, and macroeconomic factors in explaining variation in leverage using a sample of firms from nine Eastern European countries. Country-specific factors are the main determinants of variation in leverage for small unlisted companies, while firm-specific factors explain most of the variation in leverage for listed and large unlisted companies. Around half of the variation in leverage related to country factors is explained by known macroeconomic and institutional factors, while the remainder is explained by unmeasurable institutional differences (e.g. law and enforcement). These findings are in line with the results forWestern European countries in Joeveer (2005) and show that country characteristics are not more significant determinants of leverage in these transition economies.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economic Institute, Prague in its series CERGE-EI Working Papers with number
wp306.
Find related papers by JEL classification: G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Capital and Ownership Structure
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)