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Economic preferences over risk-taking and corporate finance

Author

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  • Delis, Manthos
  • Iosifidi, Maria
  • Hasan, Iftekhar
  • Tsoumas, Chris

Abstract

We contend that economic preferences over risk-taking in different subnational regions worldwide affect fundamental aspects of firms’ corporate financing, namely financing costs and capital structure. We study this hypothesis, by hand-matching firms’ regions worldwide with the corresponding regional economic risk-taking preferences. Our baseline results show that credit and bond pricing increase with higher risk-taking preferences, whereas such preferences yield lower ratios of book leverage and short-term debt. We backup our baseline results with an instrumental variables approach, which is based on the premise that high-yield agricultural societies in the pre-industrial era exhibit low risk-taking preferences.

Suggested Citation

  • Delis, Manthos & Iosifidi, Maria & Hasan, Iftekhar & Tsoumas, Chris, 2021. "Economic preferences over risk-taking and corporate finance," MPRA Paper 106321, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:106321
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Economic preferences; Risk-taking; Financing costs; Loan spreads; Bond spreads; Capital structure;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

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