Capital Structure, Firm Performance and Risk Exposure: New Evidence from OECD Countries

Abstract

Optimal capital structure is a key tool to take advantage of the trade-offbetween firm performance and risk. Based on this, we examine how optimalcapital structure influences corporate performance and risk exposure.We use a strong-balanced panel of 3,344 firm-year observations from 10different OECDcountries for 2006–2016. Results reveal that firms havingshort-term debt normally experience high accounting-based performancewhile lowering market-based performance, firms using long-term and totaldebt are largely exposed to decreased accounting and market-based performance.The higher the long-term and total debt, the greater the chancesthat firms become vulnerable to insolvency risk. Findings are robust acrossalternative indicators of capital structure, firm performance and risk, alternativemodel development and the two-step system GMM estimator tocontrol endogeneity issues. This research will be of importance to firmmanagers and policymakers in designing an appropriate capital structurefor maximizing firm performance while minimizing debt-taking risks.