A Study On Growth Opportunity and Capital Structure
Sekyung Oh
Woo Sung Kim
We examine how growth opportunities faced by Korean manufacturing firms may affect their financing decisions. The empirical implications are as follows ; First, growth opportunity is negatively associated with book leverage, consistent with simple pecking order theory. However, growth opportunity is positively related with market leverage, in line with trade-off theory or modified(complex) pecking order theory. Second, high growth opportunity firms are less "sensitive" to debt ratio than their low peers are. Third, our data appears to agree with market timing theory only when market leverage is used. Finally, growth opportunity is negatively correlated with bank loan, lending support to hold-up hypothesis.
growth opportunity,book leverage,market leverage,capital structure theory