Labor Protection and Leverage

Simintzi, E, Vig, V and Volpin, P (2015) Labor Protection and Leverage. Review of Financial Studies, 28 (2). pp. 561-591. ISSN 0893-9454

Abstract

This paper exploits intertemporal variations in employment protection across countries and finds that rigidities in labor markets are an important determinant of firms' capital structure decisions. Over the 1985–2007 period, we find that reforms increasing employment protection are associated with a 187 basis point reduction in leverage. We interpret this finding to suggest that employment protection increases operating leverage, crowding out financial leverage. This result does not appear to be due to pretreatment differences between treated and control firms, omitted variables, unobserved changes in regional economic conditions, and reverse causality. Heterogeneous treatment effects are consistent with our economic intuition.

More Details

[error in script]
Item Type: Article
Subject Areas: Finance
Additional Information:

© 2014 Oxford University Press / Society for Financial Studies

Date Deposited: 21 Nov 2016 13:05
Subjects: Investment appraisal
Labour supply
Last Modified: 28 Mar 2024 03:01
URI: https://lbsresearch.london.edu/id/eprint/639
[error in script] More

Export and Share


Download

Full text not available from this repository.

Statistics

Altmetrics
View details on Dimensions' website

Downloads from LBS Research Online

View details

Actions (login required)

Edit Item Edit Item