Are Growth Led Financing Decisions Causing Insolvency in Listed Firms of Pakistan?

Abstract

We examine the relationship between growth opportunities and insolvency risk in a mediating framework through financing decisions for 330 listed firms on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) This study covers a data period of five years ranging from 2013 to 2017. Financing decisions used in this study involve capital structure decision and debt maturity decision. We applied robust clustered panel OLS regression to the data and found a negative relationship between growth opportunities and insolvency risk in all samples consisting of overall, large and small firms. Growth opportunities have a negative impact on the capital structure, but debt maturity was influenced positively. Financing decisions influenced the insolvency risk positively. We used Baron and Kenny’s (1986) approach to detect the intervening effects of financing decisions. Further, Sobel’s test used to check the significance of mediation. Partial mediation was found for the debt maturity ratio in the large and overall sample of firms. However, the capital structure did not mediate the relationship between growth opportunities and insolvency risk in this study.