(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)"> (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)">
Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]

IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/nbr/nberch/13275.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

A Century of Capital Structure: The Leveraging of Corporate America

In: New Perspectives on Corporate Capital Structure

Author

Listed:
  • John R. Graham
  • Mark T. Leary
  • Michael R. Roberts
Abstract
Unregulated U.S. corporations dramatically increased their debt usage over the past century. Aggregate leverage - low and stable before 1945 - more than tripled between 1945 and 1970 from 11% to 35%, eventually reaching 47% by the early 1990s. The median firm in 1946 had no debt, but by 1970 had a leverage ratio of 31%. This increase occurred in all unregulated industries and affected firms of all sizes. Changing firm characteristics are unable to account for this increase. Rather, changes in government borrowing, macroeconomic uncertainty, and financial sector development play a more prominent role. Despite this increase among unregulated firms, a combination of stable debt usage among regulated firms and a decrease in the fraction of aggregate assets held by regulated firms over this period resulted in a relatively stable economy-wide leverage ratio during the 20th century.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • John R. Graham & Mark T. Leary & Michael R. Roberts, 2013. "A Century of Capital Structure: The Leveraging of Corporate America," NBER Chapters, in: New Perspectives on Corporate Capital Structure, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberch:13275
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Arvind Krishnamurthy & Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, 2012. "The Aggregate Demand for Treasury Debt," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 120(2), pages 233-267.
    2. Thomas W. Bates & Kathleen M. Kahle & René M. Stulz, 2009. "Why Do U.S. Firms Hold So Much More Cash than They Used To?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(5), pages 1985-2021, October.
    3. Robin Greenwood & Samuel Hanson & Jeremy C. Stein, 2010. "A Gap‐Filling Theory of Corporate Debt Maturity Choice," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(3), pages 993-1028, June.
    4. Thomas Philippon, 2009. "The Bond Market's q," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(3), pages 1011-1056.
    5. Evelyn M. Hurley, 1977. "The commercial paper market," Federal Reserve Bulletin, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), issue Jun, pages 525-536.
    6. Opler, Tim & Pinkowitz, Lee & Stulz, Rene & Williamson, Rohan, 1999. "The determinants and implications of corporate cash holdings," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 3-46, April.
    7. Robichek, Alexander A. & Myers, Stewart C., 1966. "Problems in the Theory of Optimal Capital Structure," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 1(2), pages 1-35, June.
    8. Douglas W. Diamond, 1984. "Financial Intermediation and Delegated Monitoring," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 51(3), pages 393-414.
    9. Benjamin M. Friedman, 1985. "Corporate Capital Structures in the United States," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number frie85-1.
    10. Sudheer Chava & Michael R. Roberts, 2008. "How Does Financing Impact Investment? The Role of Debt Covenants," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(5), pages 2085-2121, October.
    11. Newey, Whitney & West, Kenneth, 2014. "A simple, positive semi-definite, heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation consistent covariance matrix," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 33(1), pages 125-132.
    12. George M. Von Furstenberg, 1977. "Corporate Investment: Does Market Valuation Matter in the Aggregate?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 8(2), pages 347-408.
    13. Strebulaev, Ilya A. & Yang, Baozhong, 2013. "The mystery of zero-leverage firms," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(1), pages 1-23.
    14. Ilya A. Strebulaev & Baozhong Yang, 2012. "The Mystery of Zero-Leverage Firms," NBER Working Papers 17946, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Murray Z. Frank & Vidhan K. Goyal, 2009. "Capital Structure Decisions: Which Factors Are Reliably Important?," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 38(1), pages 1-37, March.
    16. Carola Frydman & Raven E. Saks, 2010. "Executive Compensation: A New View from a Long-Term Perspective, 1936--2005," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(5), pages 2099-2138.
    17. Huang, Rongbing & Ritter, Jay R., 2009. "Testing Theories of Capital Structure and Estimating the Speed of Adjustment," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 44(2), pages 237-271, April.
    18. W. Braddock Hickman, 1953. "The Volume of Corporate Bond Financing Since 1900," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number hick53-1.
    19. Ivo Welch, 2011. "Two Common Problems in Capital Structure Research: The Financial‐Debt‐To‐Asset Ratio and Issuing Activity Versus Leverage Changes," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 11(1), pages 1-17, March.
    20. James H. Scott Jr., 1976. "A Theory of Optimal Capital Structure," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 7(1), pages 33-54, Spring.
    21. Wilbur John Coleman II & Christian T. Lundblad & Ravi Bansal, 2011. "Endogenous Liquidity Supply," 2011 Meeting Papers 1200, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    22. Arnold W. Sametz, 1964. "Trends In The Volume And Composition Of Equity Finance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 19(3), pages 450-469, September.
    23. Jensen, Michael C. & Meckling, William H., 1976. "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 305-360, October.
    24. McDonald, Robert L., 1983. "Government debt and private leverage : An extension of the Miller theorem," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 303-325, December.
    25. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 2005. "Financing decisions: who issues stock?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 549-582, June.
    26. Rajan, Raghuram G & Zingales, Luigi, 1995. "What Do We Know about Capital Structure? Some Evidence from International Data," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(5), pages 1421-1460, December.
    27. Leland, Hayne E & Pyle, David H, 1977. "Informational Asymmetries, Financial Structure, and Financial Intermediation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 32(2), pages 371-387, May.
    28. John H. Ciccolo, Jr., 1981. "Changing Balance Sheet Relationships in the U.S. Manufacturing Sector, 1926-77," NBER Working Papers 0702, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    29. Raymond W. Goldsmith, 1958. "Financial Intermediaries in the American Economy since 1900," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number gold58-1.
    30. Granger, C. W. J. & Newbold, P., 1974. "Spurious regressions in econometrics," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(2), pages 111-120, July.
    31. Myers, Stewart C., 1977. "Determinants of corporate borrowing," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 147-175, November.
    32. Miller, Merton H, 1977. "Debt and Taxes," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 32(2), pages 261-275, May.
    33. Stein, Jeremy C., 2003. "Agency, information and corporate investment," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 111-165, Elsevier.
    34. Stulz, ReneM. & Johnson, Herb, 1985. "An analysis of secured debt," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 501-521, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alexandre Ripamonti, 2019. "Capital Structure Adjustments and Asymmetric Information," International Journal of Economics and Finance, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 11(12), pages 1-1, December.
    2. Zhou, Qing & Tan, Kelvin Jui Keng & Faff, Robert & Zhu, Yushu, 2016. "Deviation from target capital structure, cost of equity and speed of adjustment," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 99-120.
    3. Abdullah Iqbal & Ortenca Kume, 2014. "Impact of Financial Crisis on Firms’ Capital Structure in UK, France, and Germany," Multinational Finance Journal, Multinational Finance Journal, vol. 18(3-4), pages 249-280, September.
    4. Ayturk, Yusuf, 2017. "The effects of government borrowing on corporate financing: Evidence from Europe," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 96-103.
    5. Armenter, Roc & Hnatkovska, Viktoria, 2017. "Taxes and capital structure: Understanding firms’ savings," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 13-33.
    6. Michael B. Devereux & Eric R. Young & Changhua Yu, 2015. "A New Dilemma: Capital Controls and Monetary Policy in Sudden Stop Economies," NBER Working Papers 21791, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Alfonso Herrero de Egaña & Carmen Soria Bravo & Alberto Muñoz Cabanes, 2016. "On the Separability of Real and Financial Decisions," International Advances in Economic Research, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 22(2), pages 211-224, May.
    8. Ricardo J. Caballero & Emmanuel Farhi & Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, 2017. "Rents, Technical Change, and Risk Premia Accounting for Secular Trends in Interest Rates, Returns on Capital, Earning Yields, and Factor Shares," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(5), pages 614-620, May.
    9. Dzhamalova, Valeriia, 2016. "Capital Structure of Borrowers and Lenders: An Empirical Analysis," Knut Wicksell Working Paper Series 2016/1, Lund University, Knut Wicksell Centre for Financial Studies.
    10. Michaely, Roni & Popadak, Jillian & Vincent, Christopher, 2015. "The Deleveraging of U.S. Firms and Institutional Investors’ Role," MPRA Paper 66128, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Belkhir, Mohamed & Maghyereh, Aktham & Awartani, Basel, 2016. "Institutions and corporate capital structure in the MENA region," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 99-129.
    12. Christopher A Hennessy & Boris Radnaev, 2018. "Learning and Leverage Cycles in General Equilibrium: Theory and Evidence [How sensitive is investment to cash flow when financing is frictionless?]," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 22(1), pages 311-335.
    13. John Graham & Mark T. Leary & Michael R. Roberts, 2014. "How Does Government Borrowing Affect Corporate Financing and Investment?," NBER Working Papers 20581, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Ripamonti, Alexandre, 2019. "Capital Structure Adjustments and Asymmetric Information," MPRA Paper 96936, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. David López-Salido & Jeremy C. Stein & Egon Zakrajšek, 2017. "Credit-Market Sentiment and the Business Cycle," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(3), pages 1373-1426.
    16. Devereux, Michael P. & Maffini, Giorgia & Xing, Jing, 2018. "Corporate tax incentives and capital structure: New evidence from UK firm-level tax returns," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 250-266.
    17. Jensen, Henrik & Ravn, Søren Hove & Santoro, Emiliano, 2018. "Changing credit limits, changing business cycles," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 211-239.
    18. Zhang, Man & Brookins, Oscar T. & Huang, Xiaowei, 2022. "The crowding out effect of central versus local government debt: Evidence from China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    19. Perez, M. Fabricio & Shkilko, Andriy & Sokolov, Konstantin, 2015. "Factor models for binary financial data," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 61(S2), pages 177-188.
    20. Temimi, Akram & Zeitun, Rami & Mimouni, Karim, 2016. "How does the tax status of a country impact capital structure? Evidence from the GCC region," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 37, pages 71-89.
    21. Francis A. Longstaff & Ilya A. Strebulaev, 2014. "Corporate Taxes and Capital Structure: A Long-Term Historical Perspective," NBER Working Papers 20372, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Graham, John R. & Leary, Mark T. & Roberts, Michael R., 2015. "A century of capital structure: The leveraging of corporate America," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(3), pages 658-683.
    2. John Graham & Mark T. Leary & Michael R. Roberts, 2014. "How Does Government Borrowing Affect Corporate Financing and Investment?," NBER Working Papers 20581, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Hong-Yi Chen & Cheng Few Lee & Tzu Tai, 2020. "The Joint Determinants of Capital Structure and Stock Rate of Return: A LISREL Model Approach," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Cheng Few Lee & John C Lee (ed.), HANDBOOK OF FINANCIAL ECONOMETRICS, MATHEMATICS, STATISTICS, AND MACHINE LEARNING, chapter 35, pages 1345-1397, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    4. İbrahim Yarba & Z. Nuray Güner, 2020. "Leverage dynamics: Do financial development and government leverage matter? Evidence from a major developing economy," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 59(5), pages 2473-2507, November.
    5. Mai, Nhat Chi, 2012. "Market timing, taxes and capital structure: evidence from Vietnam," OSF Preprints t3mvs, Center for Open Science.
    6. Dang, Viet Anh & Kim, Minjoo & Shin, Yongcheol, 2015. "In search of robust methods for dynamic panel data models in empirical corporate finance," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 84-98.
    7. Ippolito, Filippo & Ozdagli, Ali K. & Perez-Orive, Ander, 2018. "The transmission of monetary policy through bank lending: The floating rate channel," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 49-71.
    8. Bessler, Wolfgang & Drobetz, Wolfgang & Haller, Rebekka & Meier, Iwan, 2013. "The international zero-leverage phenomenon," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 196-221.
    9. Bontempi, Maria Elena & Bottazzi, Laura & Golinelli, Roberto, 2020. "A multilevel index of heterogeneous short-term and long-term debt dynamics," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    10. Ebrahim, M. Shahid & Girma, Sourafel & Shah, M. Eskandar & Williams, Jonathan, 2014. "Dynamic capital structure and political patronage: The case of Malaysia," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 117-128.
    11. Dang, Viet Anh, 2013. "An empirical analysis of zero-leverage firms: New evidence from the UK," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 189-202.
    12. San Martín, Pablo & Saona, Paolo, 2017. "Capital structure in the Chilean corporate sector: Revisiting the stylized facts," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 163-174.
    13. Wolfgang Breuer & Ji Cao & Marc Oliver Rieger & K. Can Soypak, 2019. "Capital Structure Decisions, Loss Aversion, and Equity Premium," Working Paper Series 2019-04, University of Trier, Research Group Quantitative Finance and Risk Analysis.
    14. Drobetz, Wolfgang & Gounopoulos, Dimitrios & Merikas, Andreas & Schröder, Henning, 2013. "Capital structure decisions of globally-listed shipping companies," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 49-76.
    15. Viet Anh Dang, 2011. "Testing Capital Structure Theories Using Error Correction Models: Evidence From The Uk, France And Germany," Post-Print hal-00732527, HAL.
    16. Wenlian Gao & Feifei Zhu & Kai Chen, 2023. "The role of bank lenders in firm leverage adjustments," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 46(1), pages 63-97, February.
    17. Antonczyk, Ron Christian & Salzmann, Astrid Juliane, 2014. "Overconfidence and optimism: The effect of national culture on capital structure," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 132-151.
    18. Feld, Lars P. & Heckemeyer, Jost H. & Overesch, Michael, 2013. "Capital structure choice and company taxation: A meta-study," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 2850-2866.
    19. repec:dgr:rugsom:01e54 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Clemente-Almendros, José A. & Sogorb-Mira, Francisco, 2018. "Costs of debt, tax benefits and a new measure of non-debt tax shields: examining debt conservatism in Spanish listed firms," Revista de Contabilidad - Spanish Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 162-175.
    21. César Camisón & José Antonio Clemente & Sergio Camisón-Haba, 2022. "Asset tangibility, information asymmetries and intangibles as determinants of family firms leverage," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 16(7), pages 2047-2082, October.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberch:13275. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.