• The Korean Journal of Financial Management
• /
• v.25 no.2
• /
• pp.33-68
• /
• 2008

The purpose of this paper is to test the market timing hypothesis and impact of macro economic variables on capital structure choice as well as the traditional static trade-off and pecking order theories of capital structure in a integrated framework. Through a two stage test of target capital structure and capital structure choice, none of theories was consistently supported, but most of them were partly supported. In the first stage analysis of target ratio, coefficients of firm-specific variables generally supported the predictions of pecking order theory rather than those of the static trade-off theory. However, the result of the second stage test on capital structure choice supported the hypothesis of the static trade-off theory, which claims that firms usually set and pursue the target leverage ratio. Further, the result of the seconde stage shows that a simple pecking oder theory does not hold because firms with deficit of internal fund tend to issue bonds rather than stocks to raise outside fund. Also, the result indicates that the market timing hypothesis holds because firms with over-valued stocks tend to issue stocks rather than bonds. However, contrary to Korajczyk and Levy(2003), the impact of macro economic variables such as term or credit spreads on capital structure choice was negligible, and the impact of macro economic and market timing hypothesis variables were not greater in financially unconstrained firms as Korajczyk and Levy(2003) suggested.