서강대학교

초록/요약

This study examines the impact of the 1997 Asian and the 2008 global financial crises on the capital structure of Korean non-financial listed companies. Using a data set covering 1,159 Korean listed non-financial firms from 10 industrial sectors over a 31-year period, specifically 1985-2015, this study investigates the pattern of firms’ capital structure before and after the crises and identifies the speed of adjustment toward the optimal leverage. Unbalanced panel data was used in the estimation. The study finds different effects of two crises on both capital structure and adjustment speed. The average debt ratio fell significantly after the 1997 Asian crisis. The distance between optimal and observed debt ratios shrank after the Asian crisis, while the speed of adjustment increased twofold. Unlike the Asian crisis, the global crisis of 2008 was found to have a positive effect on companies’ debt ratio and the speed of their adjustment toward optimal leverage. The empirical analysis revealed that Korean non-financial listed companies on average decreased their debt ratios over the entire period of observation, with leverage being highest before the Asian crisis and lowest after the global financial crisis. The results also show that the debt ratio of Korean chaebols is higher than that of non-chaebols. Moreover, the high level of leverage of Korean firms have found to be associated with tangible assets, income variability, size and age of the firm, non-debt tax shield, and uniqueness.