CAPITAL STRUCTURE AND CORPORATE PERFORMANCE OF NIGERIAN QUOTED FIRMS: A PANEL DATA APPROACH

📄 Project Abstract

This paper presents empirical findings on the impact of capital structure (leverage) on firm's performance. The main objective of this study is to determine the overall effect of capital structure on corporate performance of Nigerian quoted firms by establishing the relationship that exists between the capital structure choices of firms in Nigeria and their return on assets, return on equity and tobin's Q (a market performance measure). The effect of institutional factors such as size, tax and industry on firms' performance was also established. The study employed panel data analysis by using Fixed-effect estimation, Random-effect estimation and Pooled Regression Model. The usual identification tests and the Hausman's Chi-square statistics for testing whether the Fixed Effects model estimator is an appropriate alternative to the Random Effects model were also computed for each model. The empirical results based on 2003 to 2007 accounting and marketing data for 101 quoted firms in Niger...