Business Faculty Publications
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2013
Publication Title
The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association
Keywords
Strategic Management
Disciplines
Finance and Financial Management
Abstract
As a firm deviates from its target leverage, marginal bankruptcy costs change at a faster speed than marginal tax shield. This renders the speed of adjustment (SOA) of capital structure an increasing function of the starting deviation from the target. Adopting a bootstrapping-based estimation, we confirm the existence of such heterogeneity in SOA that is statistically significant and economically nontrivial. Typically, if Firm A is one standard deviation (about 17%) and Firm B is two standard deviations away from their leverage targets, then B’s SOA is 41% greater than that of A, and the half life of B’s leverage deviation is shorter by 2.5 years. The findings are consistent with the dynamic tradeoff theory in the presence of reasonable adjustment costs.
Recommended Citation
Mukherjee, T., Wang, W. (2013). Capital Structure Deviation and Speed of Adjustment. The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, 48, pp.597-615.
DOI
10.2139/ssrn.1927698
Version
Postprint
Publisher's Statement
This is the accepted version of the following article: Mukherjee, T., Wang, W. (2013). Capital Structure Deviation and Speed of Adjustment. The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, 48, pp.597-615., which has been published in final form at 10.2139/ssrn.1927698
Volume
48
