A comparative analysis of financing decisions

: in export and non-export sectors in Portugal

Abstract

The main goal of this empirical work is to study the differences in the financing decisions between export and non-export sectors in Portugal and to examine if the export intensity affects the Portuguese firms’ leverage levels. In order to give an answer to the purpose of this work, we collected a sample of 32 912 Portuguese non-public firms with data during the 2011-2015 period, and we divided those firms in export and non-export sectors. Having in mind the prominent capital structure literature, we analyzed the influence of (i) the capital structure determinants, namely the Taxes, Tangibility, Profitability, Size, Industry, Business Risk, Non-Debt Tax Shields and Inflation Rate in the firms’ leverage levels; and (ii) the influence of the export intensity in firms’ capital structures. Our results suggest that while some factors influence similarly the debt level of firms belonging to both export and non-export sectors - Tangibility, Profitability, Size, NDTS and IR -; specific variables - Taxes, Industry and BR variables - affect differently the capital structure of firms belong to the export vis-à-vis non-export sectors. According to the obtained results, the impact in firms’ debt levels of some of these variables, namely the Non-Debt Tax Shields and Inflation Rate, is not in line with the expected impact suggested by the existing literature.

Date of Award	4 Jul 2017
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	João Pinto (Supervisor)