This study investigates whether deviation from target leverage (leverage adjustment speed) in firms with small positive earnings (i.e., SPOS) is higher (slower) than that of other firms. We find evidence suggesting that managers of SPOS manipulate sales, production processes, and discretionary expenses to avoid reporting losses. Our results show that deviation from target leverage in SPOS is hi...

Information opacity leads to information asymmetry. In this situation, in providing their own financial needs, firms face limitations and inevitably provide their financial needs from the debt market by signalling private information to it. In addition, information opacity affects the leverage adjustment speed. This research investigates the effect of information opacity on deviation from targe...

T paper proposes a new methodology to infer investors’ expectations about the speed of leverage adjustment implicit in the prices of credit instruments. On average, the credit markets imply a fairly rapid annual speed of adjustment of 26% toward a firm’s predicted leverage. The speed varies considerably across partitions formed by the differential implications of the pecking order, market timin...

In this study, the effect of management entrenchments on the speed of cash holding adjustment in Iran has been investigated. After designing the management entrenchment evaluation indicators, the transaction information was collected from the Stock Exchange in the five-year period of 2011-2015. The statistical sample consists of 155 companies selected by systematic deletion method. In this rese...

A number of prominent papers in the literature have estimated the speed of adjustment (SOA) of firms’ leverage ratios with estimators not designed for applications in which the dependent variable is a ratio. This made them detect mean reversion, which they mistakenly considered as readjustment. We propose a non-parametric way to model leverage ratios under the NULL, and a method of reconciling ...

journal of accounting advances (j.a.a) vol. 5, no. 1, 2013, ser. 64/3     extended abstract   an analysis of the effects of growth opportunities on financial leverage of companies listed on tehran stock exchange   dr. s. samadi                  s. soheili                   v. kabiripour isfahan university   introduction the ability of companies in identifying the potential financial sources to ...