IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eme/parpps/par-01-2018-0008.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Impact of financial leverage on profitability of listed manufacturing firms in China

Author

Listed:
  • Ilhan Dalci

Abstract

Purpose - The purpose of the study is to explore how financial leverage influences profitability of 1,503 listed manufacturing firms in China. Design/methodology/approach - The sample of the study is composed of the listed manufacturing firms in China. For the manufacturing firms, the annual financial information from 2008 to 2016 is obtained from the ORBIS database. In this study, initially a simultaneous equation approach is used to control for potential endogeneity. Then, additional regression analyses are conducted with panel data over the period of 2008-2016 using OLS, Fixed-effects, First-difference, Random-effects andArellano and Bond’s (1991)two-step Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) methods. Findings - The results reveal that the impact of leverage on profitability is inverted U-shaped. In this inverted U-shaped relationship, the positive impact of financial leverage on profitability could be attributed to tax shield, whereas the negative impact might be because of bankruptcy cost, financial distress, severe agency problems and information asymmetry that the listed Chinese firms suffer from because of some institutional characteristics of China. Research limitations/implications - First, this study focuses on only listed manufacturing firms in China. Second, ownership types are not taken into account in this study. Practical implications - First, the Chinese government should direct its efforts toward developing the bond markets and promoting alternative privately owned loan creditors to state-owned banks. Parallel to this, the transformation process toward market economy should be accelerated to facilitate the privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). In addition to this, development of the bond market and privatization of SOEs will also mitigate the agency conflict between creditors and managers and between shareholders and managers. Originality/value - To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study which investigates the impact of capital structure on profitability of the listed firms in China.

Suggested Citation

  • Ilhan Dalci, 2018. "Impact of financial leverage on profitability of listed manufacturing firms in China," Pacific Accounting Review, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 30(4), pages 410-432, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:eme:parpps:par-01-2018-0008
    DOI: 10.1108/PAR-01-2018-0008
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/PAR-01-2018-0008/full/html?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/PAR-01-2018-0008/full/pdf?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1108/PAR-01-2018-0008?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    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. Li Wang & Lay Hoon Ang & Fumeng Gao & Hazlina Abdul Halim, 2023. "The relationality of parts for narrative identity constitution in the corporate profile translations of China’s multinational corporations," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-11, December.
    2. Zaheda Daruwala, 2023. "Influence of Financial Leverage on Corporate Profitability: Does it Really Matter?," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 13(4), pages 37-46, July.

    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:eme:parpps:par-01-2018-0008. 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: Emerald Support (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.