IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aka/aoecon/v62y2012i2p229-263.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Capital structure and its choice in Central and Eastern Europe

Author

Listed:
  • Péter Hernádi

    (Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Department of Finance, Magyar tudósok krt. 2, H-1117 Budapest, Hungary)

  • Mihály Ormos

    (Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Department of Finance, Magyar tudósok krt. 2, H-1117 Budapest, Hungary)

Abstract

We analyze the determinants of capital structure and its choice by small and medium-sized enterprises in Central and Eastern Europe from 2002 to 2007. We test the relevance of the three main theories: the Static Trade-off Theory, the Pecking Order Theory, and the Agency Theory, which have been derived primarily for developed markets, because our knowledge on their validity for emerging European countries is limited. We confirm the positive impact of size and asset tangibility on the leverage, while rejecting both the positive impact of profitability and tax, as well as the negative impact of business risk and non-debt tax shields. We report that SMEs behave homogeneously, and the relevant capital structure determinants show remarkable steadiness. Our results show a special time varying behaviour, in which the relevant determinants become stronger, while most of the country-specific factors present weakening effects. We argue that firms of the CEE countries remarkably converged their financial decision-making procedure to that of developed countries through the investigated period. The relevance of the Trade-off Theory is weak, as firms respect a one-sided upper threshold rather than converging to a fixed target on both sides, while they are not indifferent to the hierarchy of financing alternatives.

Suggested Citation

  • Péter Hernádi & Mihály Ormos, 2012. "Capital structure and its choice in Central and Eastern Europe," Acta Oeconomica, Akadémiai Kiadó, Hungary, vol. 62(2), pages 229-263, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:aka:aoecon:v:62:y:2012:i:2:p:229-263
    Note: We have received helpful suggestions from Matjaz Crnigoj and useful comments from participants at the 2010 INFINITI Conference at the Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland and at the EuroConference 2010, organised by the Society for the Study of Emerging Markets, in Milas, Turkey. We are thankful to the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. We acknowledge the financial support of BAROSS-4-2005-0005-OMFB-01067/2006 project.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://akademiai.com/content/46280280462k37kh/fulltext.pdf
    Download Restriction: subscription
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Škuláňová Nicole, 2020. "Impact of selected determinants on the financial structure of the mining companies in the selected countries," Review of Economic Perspectives, Sciendo, vol. 20(2), pages 197-215, June.
    2. Aleksandra Stoiljković & Slavica Tomić & Bojan Leković & Milenko Matić, 2022. "Determinants of Capital Structure: Empirical Evidence of Manufacturing Companies in the Republic of Serbia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(1), pages 1-19, December.
    3. Dominika Gajdosikova & Katarina Valaskova & Tomas Kliestik & Maria Kovacova, 2023. "Research on Corporate Indebtedness Determinants: A Case Study of Visegrad Group Countries," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-30, January.
    4. Péter Hernádi & Mihály Ormos, 2012. "What managers think of capital structure and how they act: Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe," Baltic Journal of Economics, Baltic International Centre for Economic Policy Studies, vol. 12(2), pages 47-71, December.
    5. Jacek Barburski & Artur Hołda, 2023. "Determinants of the Corporate Financing Structure in the Energy and Mining Sectors; A Comparative Analysis Based on the Example of Selected EU Countries for 2012–2020," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(12), pages 1-29, June.
    6. Andor, Gyorgy & Mohanty, Sunil K. & Toth, Tamas, 2015. "Capital budgeting practices: A survey of Central and Eastern European firms," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 148-172.
    7. Andrzej Cwynar & Wiktor Cwynar & Robert Dankiewicz, 2016. "Studies of firm capital structure determinants in Poland: an integrative review," "e-Finanse", University of Information Technology and Management, Institute of Financial Research and Analysis, vol. 11(4), pages 1-22, March.
    8. Monika Wieczorek-Kosmala & Joanna Błach & Iwona Gorzeń-Mitka, 2021. "Does Capital Structure Drive Profitability in the Energy Sector?," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(16), pages 1-15, August.
    9. Bisera Karanović Gordana Nikolić Goran Karanović, 2019. "Analyzing Capital Structure across Industries: Evidence from Croatia," Zagreb International Review of Economics and Business, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb, vol. 22(SCI2), pages 1-10, December.
    10. Sasho Arsov & Aleksandar Naumoski, 2016. "Determinants of capital structure: An empirical study of companies from selected post-transition economies," Zbornik radova Ekonomskog fakulteta u Rijeci/Proceedings of Rijeka Faculty of Economics, University of Rijeka, Faculty of Economics and Business, vol. 34(1), pages 119-146.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    capital structure; emerging European countries; Static Trade-off Theory; Pecking Order Theory; Agency Theory;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aka:aoecon:v:62:y:2012:i:2:p:229-263. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kriston, Orsolya (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://akademiai.hu/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.