Capital structure and corporate governance: Evidence from Eastern European listed companies

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to investigate the relationship between corporate governance quality and capital structure of a firm. Survey sample consists of 799 listed companies in 9 Eastern European countries. OLS regression is done with book and market leverage as dependent variables and a corporate governance index constructed by the authors serves as the main explanatory variable. Other control variables, mostly positions and ratios from financial statements, are also used. The regression models with market leverage as dependent variable have larger explanatory power than models with book leverage. The results of the survey reveal negative relation between corporate governance index and market leverage, which means the higher level of corporate governance, the lower level of debt. Other existing empirical findings from other countries show various conclusions – some similar, some – contrary to this survey, and some have inconclusive results.