A Research on Pecking Order Theory of Financing: The Case of Korean Manufacturing Firms

This paper empirically tests pecking order theory. Korean listed firms are used as the samples. On the whole we find supportive results for pecking order theory. The fixed effect model on the whole period shows that as pecking order theory suggests that debt ratio decreases as cash flow. ROA, physical assets, and firm size increase. Again, it is shown that corporate debt ratio significantly decreases as cash flow or ROA increases in every sub-sample, which coincides with the prediction of pecking order theory. Corporate debt ratio significantly decreases as physical assets or jinn size increases in case of the whole sample, pre-financial crisis period, and the sub-samples by q-ratio, which also supports the prediction of pecking order theory. Statistical significance of the coefficients of physical assets or firm size completely disappears after Korean financial crisis. Perhaps it is because the role of physical assets or firm size as a mitigator of information asymmetry significantly weakens after the financial crisis as Korean financial market becomes more transparent. For small firms only size variable is negatively and significantly related with debt to assets. It seems that size is an important factor for smaller firms in making financing decision.