Macroeconomic and Institutional Factors, Debt Composition and Capital Structure of Latin American Companies

ABSTRACT The objective of this research was to examine the influence of macroeconomic and institutional factors when determining the capital structure of Latin American companies from 2009 to 2014, and also analyze if the significance of these factors to explain the capital structure of the companies is changed taking into account the financing composition. We used hierarchical linear modeling to process data. The main results pointed that, both the representative variables of characteristics of the firm and representative variables of countries are important determinants of the capital structure of the companies. However the variables of the firm explain a much higher percentage of variance of leverage. Thus, we emphasize that there is still much to be done in order to analyze the effects of macroeconomic and institutional factors. We expect that this study has created contributions to the national literature, by using a theoretical and also econometric approach that has not been much explored so far. As well as for market agents to examine the determinants of capital structure, considering the institutional aspects.

本研究旨在探讨2009年至2014年间拉丁美洲公司在确定资本结构过程中，宏观经济和制度性因素的影响，并分析在考虑融资结构的情况下，这些因素对解释公司资本结构的重要性是否有所改变。本研究采用层次线性模型对数据进行分析。主要研究发现，企业特征和各国代表性变量均为公司资本结构的重要决定因素。然而，企业变量解释了杠杆率变异的更高比例。因此，我们强调，在分析宏观经济和制度性因素影响方面，仍有大量工作待做。我们预期，本研究通过采用尚未广泛探索的理论和计量经济学方法，为国家文献做出了贡献，并为市场参与者提供了考察资本结构决定因素，同时考虑制度性因素的参考。