Capital Structure Choice and Firm Value: New Empirical Evidence from Asymmetric Causality Test

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the possible asymmetric causal relationship between capital structure and firm value by employing the asymmetric causality test of Hatemi-J (2012), on a time series data of Turkish manufacturing industry (consisting of Borsa Istanbul listed manufacturing firms) for the period of 1990.Q1-2015.Q4. Test results point out a unidirectional asymmetric causal relationship between capital structure and firm value, indicating that capital structure Granger-cause firm value when shocks are negative, but not when shocks are positive. More explicitly, a decrease in total debt ratio leads to a decrease in the market-to-book value ratio. Considering the effect of only negative shock, this empirical finding also supports partial evidence to the validity of trade-off theory which predicts a positive relationship between debt level and firm value.