Capital Structure of Firms and Real-Financial Linkages in East Asia

Abstract

This paper describes the pattern of corporate financing choices in East Asian listed firms, analyzes the main drivers of debt, equity and maturity choices, and examines the effect of financing choices on the growth of firms' investment in tangible assets. The paper makes new contributions by creating a large database of financial data from the balance sheets of listed companies in East Asia; by considering the combined effects of firm factors, industry characteristics and country features in explaining firms' financial choices; and by introducing a measure of financial openness into country characteristics to allow policy lessons to be drawn about financial opening. East Asian firms have a distinctive financial pattern, depending heavily on external equity finance, and their choice of financial structure is determined by their own characteristics, their industry affiliation and their country characteristics. The growth of investment in tangible assets, however, is driven only by country characteristics such as legal, institutional and financial market structures. The paper suggests further work to derive the effect of more detailed country-level policy variables and the interactions between financial market structures and policies to develop concrete policy advice. Show more