Research Article
A Study on the Effect of Country Effects on Capital Structure Determination of Foreign-Invested Firms
Published: January 1998 · Vol. 27 No. 5 · pp. 1195-1212
Full Text
Abstract
This paper conducted an empirical analysis of the influence of country-of-origin effects on the capital structure decisions of foreign-invested enterprises that have invested in Korea. Specifically, focusing on U.S.- and Japanese-nationality foreign-invested enterprises in the manufacturing sector, the study tested whether the capital structures of these firms differ due to the influence of home country norms where their parent companies are headquartered, and further analyzed the relationships between capital structure and country factors, firm-specific factors, and industry factors. The empirical results showed that Korean subsidiaries of U.S. firms had lower debt ratios than Korean subsidiaries of Japanese firms, and that the country factor had a statistically highly significant effect on the debt ratios of both U.S. and Japanese invested firms. Additionally, higher foreign ownership stakes were associated with lower debt ratios, indicating that U.S.- and Japanese-nationality foreign-invested enterprises prefer relatively lower debt ratios compared to Korean firms. This can be interpreted as the country-of-origin effect—stemming from norms and other factors of the parent company's home country—exerting a considerable influence on capital structure decisions of foreign-invested enterprises. Meanwhile, firm size and profitability variables were found to be important factors influencing the capital structure of Korean subsidiaries of Japanese firms, but did not show a statistically significant relationship with the capital structure of Korean subsidiaries of U.S. firms. Industry factors were also found to have little influence on the capital structure of foreign-invested enterprises.
