This study examines the effect of transaction costs and information asymmetry on firms’ capital-structure decisions in 40 countries. The findings indicate that transaction costs affect both capital-market timing and capital-structure rebalancing. Past market-timing activity has a significantly negative impact on the current debt ratio, and this impact is stronger for firms facing lower transaction costs of external financing, as defined by legal origin, capital-market development, and securities rules in their home countries. Further analysis indicates that firms in countries with lower transaction costs also rebalance their capital structure more quickly after a deviation from the target, but the rebalancing does not eliminate the market timing effect on capital structure completely.

This study examines the effect of corporate asset growth on stock returns using data on nine equity markets in Asia. For the period from 1981 to 2007, we find a pervasive negative relation between asset growth and subsequent stock returns. We further examine the determinants of this asset growth effect across markets. The negative relation between asset growth and stock returns is weaker in markets where firms’ assets growth rates are more homogeneous, and in markets where firms rely more on internal financing and bank financing for growth. On the other hand, corporate governance, investor protection, and legal origin do not influence the magnitude of the asset growth effect in the Asian markets.

Numerous papers in the “law and finance” literature have established that countries with better functioning legal institutions enjoy better developed capital markets, and that legal origin is a fundamental determinant of legal institutions (La Porta et al. 1997, 1998, 2006; Djankov et al. 2007). In this study, we test whether banks are willing to grant more credit to the private sector when they enjoy superior legal protection. We test this hypothesis using bank-level data from 45 emerging-market countries and a random-effects model that controls for bank heterogeneity. We find that lenders allocate a significantly higher portion of their assets to loans (i) where they enjoy English legal origin rather than French or Socialist legal origin; (ii) where enforcement of debt contracts is more efficient and (iii) where banks enjoy fewer restrictions on their operations. These support our hypothesis that superior legal protection leads to more bank credit, which, in turn, should lead to higher economic growth.