Employment Protection and SME Capital Structure Decisions
研究了就业保护对中小企业资本结构的影响，发现就业保护义务越少，企业杠杆率越高且更倾向于调整杠杆水平。
This study examines the effect of employment protection (EP) on the capital structure of SMEs. We argue that EP is linked to both the level of leverage and leverage adjustments because of its impact on financial distress costs and a firm's operational leverage. Data on employment contract types allow us to compose company specific measures of exposure to EP using a panel data set of 14,858 Belgian SMEs between 2000 and 2012. Our results show that the leverage ratio of firms is higher and that firms are more likely to adjust leverage levels when they are subject to fewer EP obligations.