We examine the relationship between customer concentration and capital structure adjustment speed using a sample of US listed firms from 1977 to 2020. We found that the customer-concentrated firms have a lower speed of leverage adjustment. Customer concentration affects leverage adjustment speed mainly through increased cash flow volatility and asset specificity. The negative association is more pronounced in firms with high relationship-specific investments and low switching costs for their customers. Stock market reacts to leverage deviation strongly for firms with concentrated customers. Our findings highlight the vital role of customers as key stakeholders in capital structure decisions.

Serfling (2016) examines how the increase in firing costs impacts the capital structure decisions of firms and hypothesizes that higher firing costs of labor lead to a decline in a firm’s financial leverage use by directly increasing its distress costs and indirectly lifting its operating leverage. Stricter labor protection laws passed in China in 2007 provide an opportunity to revisit the issue within a controlled environment. Employees of SOEs already enjoy the benefits that the new labor law imparts. So, SOEs are exposed to lower firing costs than their non-SOE counterparts. Additionally, the exposure to bankruptcy is more limited for SOEs than non-SOEs. We hypothesize and show that non-SOE firms’ financial leverage decreases more than SOEs, confirming the leverage-lowering effect of labor protection laws. Further, the decline in financial leverage is more pronounced for a labor-intensive firm or one that encounters steep competition.

We investigate the role of managers’ country of origin in leverage decisions using data on foreign joint ventures in China. By focusing on foreign joint ventures in a single country, we are able to hold constant the financing environment, eliminate the effects of formal institutions in the foreign managers’ home country, and consequently reveal the effects of informal institutions such as national culture on corporate finance decisions. Using cultural values of embeddedness, mastery, and uncertainty avoidance to explain country of origin effects, we find that national culture has significant explanatory power in the financial leverage decisions of foreign joint ventures in China. Country-level variation is evident in capital structure and appears to work through choices of firm characteristics, industry affiliation, ownership structure, and region of investment.

We investigate the role of managers' country of origin in leverage decisions using data on foreign joint ventures in China. By focusing on foreign joint ventures in a single country, we are able to hold constant the financing environment, eliminate the effects of formal institutions in the foreign managers' home country, and consequently reveal the effects of informal institutions such as national culture on corporate finance decisions. Using cultural values of embeddedness, mastery, and uncertainty avoidance to explain country of origin effects, we find that national culture has significant explanatory power in the financial leverage decisions of foreign joint ventures in China. Country-level variation is evident in capital structure and appears to work through choices of firm characteristics, industry affiliation, ownership structure, and region of investment.