This study examines the impact of industrial robot applications on labor investment efficiency. While previous studies have mainly focused on how industrial robots affect productivity, economic ...structures, and labor markets, their influence on labor investment efficiency has remained relatively underexplored. Using data from Chinese manufacturing firms, our results demonstrate that the adoption of industrial robots significantly improves labor investment efficiency. This improvement is mainly achieved by optimizing the human capital structure and enhancing capital deepening. We also find that this effect is more pronounced in non-state-owned enterprises, in environments with reduced information asymmetry, and in firms with low R&D investment and labor intensity. Overall, our results highlight the positive effect of industrial robot applications on the efficiency of corporate labor investments from a microeconomic perspective, providing important insights for labor investment decisions and resource allocation optimization.
•Industrial robot applications in China improve labor investment efficiency.•Optimizing human capital structure and facilitating capital deepening are two key mechanisms.•The effect is more pronounced for non-SOEs and firms with poor information asymmetry.•Lower R&D investment and labor intensity strengthen this effect.
Financial constraints are fundamental to empirical research in finance and economics. We propose two tests to evaluate how well measures of financial constraints actually capture constraints. We find ...that firms typically classified as constrained do not actually behave as if they were constrained: they have no trouble raising debt when their demand for debt increases exogenously and use the proceeds of equity issues to increase payouts to shareholders. Our evidence suggests that extant findings that have been attributed to constraints may instead reflect differences in the growth and financing policies of firms at different stages of their life cycles.
Over the past decades, there has been a trend towards privatisation in Europe. However, surprisingly little has been published in the finance literature on the industry effects of privatisation on ...non-financial firms’ capital structure. Talberg, Winge, Frydenberg, and Westgaard (2008) demonstrate that capital structures are industry-specific, and the literature on privatisation and leverage claims both a positive and a negative effect. Using a large sample of privatised firms in Europe, this paper analyses the impact of privatisation on firms’ capital structure. Our results provide no evidence that privatisation impacts firms’ capital structure. Instead, the level of leverage remains largely the same a few years after privatisation. These results remain unchanged even after controlling for certain characteristics, such as the type (asset sale or share issue) of privatisation and the percentage of privatisation. However, additional tests reveal that industry specificities are relevant in explaining capital structure variations following privatisation. When considering industry-specific characteristics, we found substantial statistical evidence that firms in capital-intensive industries experience a greater leverage level after being privatised. Our findings also suggest that governments may optimise privatisation processes after considering what capital-intensive firms may require in terms of funding long-term assets.
We find that manufacturing firms adopt more conservative capital structures in response to the Nitrogen Oxides (NO
x
) Budget Trading Program (NBP) of 2004, a regional cap-and-trade program aimed at ...mitigating the NO
x
emissions of power plants in 11 midwestern and southeastern states in the United States. Our further analysis demonstrates that, because the NBP induces an electricity price shock, it affects manufacturers’ financial decisions by raising their operating leverage and distress risk. We also find that firms respond to the NBP’s adoption heterogeneously: they adjust their financial leverage more dramatically when facing greater electricity intensity, financial distress threats, or competitive pressure. In addition, firms adapt not only capital structure, but also other financial policies in response to the regulation. Overall, our study shows that climate policy risk constitutes an essential consideration in firm financial decisions. It also highlights potential unintended consequences of policy responses to climate change for the corporate sector.
This paper was accepted by George Serafeim, Special Section of
Management Science
on Business and Climate Change.
Funding:
The authors gratefully acknowledge generous financial support from the Alliance Manchester Business School Strategic Research Investment Fund.
Supplemental Material:
The data files and online appendix and data are available at
https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4617
.
Capital structure choice is essential for an institution to maximize its value. Because the institution's decision maker decides how to finance projects before making investment decisions, its ...financial decisions ultimately affect every aspect of operations thereafter. This book discusses several key theories of corporate capital structure to answer how funding structure shapes an institution's value.
In this book, the author emphasizes the microeconomic foundations of capital structure theory. He shows how various microeconomic frameworks, such as price and game theories, principal-agent model, and mechanism design, can be applied to solve the optimal capital structure of a firm. By getting used to optimizing corporate capital structures subject to various constraints via microeconomic frameworks, readers will become capable of investigating how to finance projects in their own setups. Thus, this book not only informs readers of specific knowledge but also provides them with tools to solve new problems that they will face in their future.
This book will be a valuable resource for students of corporate finance at the postgraduate or doctoral level and will serve as the material for professional training aimed at practitioners and regulators with technical expertise.
I examine how the labor market in which firms operate affects their capital structure decisions. Based on US Census Bureau data and information on companies’ decisions to locate their new operations, ...I use a large plant opening as an abrupt increase in the size of a local labor market. I find that a new plant opening leads to an increase of 2.5–3.9 percentage points in the debt-to-capital ratio of existing firms in the “winner” county relative to the “runner-up” choice. This result is consistent with the argument that larger labor markets make job loss less costly, which in turn reduces the indirect costs of financial distress. Notably, this spillover effect is larger for firms that employ the same type of workers as the new plant in the affected county.
The purpose of this study is, firstly, to examine capital structure optimization and secondly, to provide a framework for determining the optimal capital structure from the aspect of capital cost and ...corporate value. The results of our work provide an innovative model for arriving at a company's optimal capital structure based on the estimation of the effective cost of capital and the determination of the shares of new equity and long-term debt that will both minimize the overall cost of capital and maximize its value. The model can be applied for quantitative estimates of optimal capital structure. This paper contributes to the literature by applying mathematical modeling and mathematical theory of optimization to solve the problem of capital structure optimization, and by providing a framework for determining optimal capital structure. The scientific contribution of this research is development of a model of optimal capital structure from the aspect of capital cost and corporate value, and new equations for calculating the effective costs of long-term financing sources. This model provides explicit advice on optimal long-term debt and equity level and can be applied to produce a firm-specific recommendation about optimal capital structure that a given company should use.
The aim of the study is to identify the main determinants of the capital structure of energy industry companies in the European Union. The study was based on a panel of 6122 companies from 25 EU ...countries, operating between 2011 and 2018. The study used multiple regression analysis. We have obtained strong evidence for a positive relationship between corporate debt and tangibility and size, and a negative relationship for profitability and liquidity. The factors that also affect the share of debt in capital have turned out to be growth (positive relationship) and non-debt tax shield (negative relationship), but the statistical significance of these relationships is ambiguous. We have shown that growth of industry business risk is accompanied by an increase in corporate debt and this is a distinguishing feature of the energy industry. For country-specific capital structure determinants, we have obtained strong evidence for the negative relationship between GDP growth, the level of stakeholder rights protection, the degree of capital markets development, and indebtedness of the companies studied. There has been moderate support for the hypotheses of a positive effect of inflation, taxation, and the degree of financial institutions development. Our study has also shown a negative impact of the volume of energy consumption and the share of renewable sources in its production and a positive impact of market monopolization on the indebtedness of companies from the energy industry in the EU.
This study emphasized the relationship between the Chinese companies' product market competition and organizational performance. This article explored the mediating effect of capital structure and ...the moderating impact of firm size in achieving better performance of Chinese companies. This study employed a sample of 2,502 Chinese firm observations and identified that market competition positively influenced firm performance. Additionally, capital structure partly mediated the relationship between product market competition and firm performance. Similarly, the present study also tested the moderating effect of firm size (both small and large) on the association between product market competition and firm performance. The results showed that moderating large businesses affects the nexus between product market competition and firm performance. Conversely, small firms' moderating role revealed a substantial adverse impact on the association between product market competition and firm performance. These findings contribute to the literature on the complex implications of market competition on business firms' performance. The results provide insightful and practical implications for future research directions.
This study discusses the impact of executives with foreign experience on decisions involving corporate capital structures. Based on a sample of Chinese A-share listed companies, this study finds that ...firms with (more) executives with foreign experience adjust to the optimal capital structure faster. The effect exists mainly for over-levered firms that need to deleverage. The empirical results remain robust when using alternative methods to estimate target leverage, excluding the effects of mechanical adjustments, controlling the impact of corporate governance, and using the full sample to test asymmetric effects. In addition, firms managed by executives with foreign experience tend to maintain low leverage for a long time. Overall, the results show that executives with foreign experience help companies adopt more efficient and conservative capital structure adjustment decisions. The results enrich the literature on the impact of foreign experience on corporate decision-making.
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