External growth opportunities and a firm's financing policy

Sigitas Karpavičius, Fan Yu

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

6 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This study analyzes how external growth opportunities such as general demand growth impact a firm's financing policy. The model developed in this paper implies that a firm's optimal leverage ratio decreases with growth opportunities if the firm's manager is not highly risk-averse, but increases otherwise. The relation is driven by the respective changes in equity value. Our empirical tests show that equity value is greater and that financial leverage is lower for high-growth firms. This suggests that firms' managers are not highly risk-averse, on average. This paper provides an alternative explanation for the negative relation between leverage and growth opportunities.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)287-308
Number of pages22
JournalInternational Review of Economics and Finance
Volume62
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2019

Keywords

  • Capital structure
  • Growth opportunities
  • Risk preferences

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'External growth opportunities and a firm's financing policy'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this