Abstract

This paper aims, first, to investigate the effect of EPU and institutional ownership characteristics on capital structure decisions and, second, to examine the role of institutional investors characteristics during the periods of uncertainty. Based on a sample of 2100 firm-year observations from the French non-financial companies over the period of 2006–2019, this study uses panel data regressions, two stage least squares and propensity score matching. We find that firms tend to lower their leverage ratios when policy uncertainty increases. Furthermore, we show that capital structure decisions depend on institutional ownership characteristics. Our results, also, indicate that the presence of active investors, such as long-term institutional ownership and institutional common ownership, helps to mitigate the financing frictions in uncertainty periods.

中文翻译：

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经济政策不确定性对资本结构决策的影响：机构所有权特征重要吗？

摘要

本文的目的首先是研究 EPU 和机构所有权特征对资本结构决策的影响，其次是研究不确定时期机构投资者特征的作用。本研究基于 2006 年至 2019 年期间法国非金融公司 2100 个公司年度观察样本，使用面板数据回归、两阶段最小二乘法和倾向得分匹配。我们发现，当政策不确定性增加时，企业倾向于降低杠杆率。此外，我们表明资本结构决策取决于机构所有权特征。我们的结果还表明，积极投资者的存在，例如长期机构所有权和机构共同所有权，有助于减轻不确定时期的融资摩擦。