우리나라 기업의 국제화와 자본구조 결정요인에 관한 연구 = Internationalizations and Capital Structure Determinants of Korean Firms

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The purpose of this paper is twofold. One is to test whether there exist any differences in debt/equity ratio between multinational corporations and domestic corporations in Korea. The other is to investigate the effects of internationalization (multinationality) on debt/equity ratio of multinational corporations. The degree of internationalization is measured by foreign sales ratio, foreign employee ratio, and number of foreign subsidiaries. Empirical analyses show that, unlike previous studies, there exist no statistically significant differences in debt/equity ratio between Korean miltinational corporations and domestic corporations. Nor does the degree of internationalization have any significant effects on debt/equity ratio of Korean multinational corporations. Among several control variables, bankruptcy costs, profitability, and firm size appear to influence the debt/equity ratio of multinational corporations. Agency costs which is shown to affect the debt/equity ratio of foreign multinational corporations, does not appear to have any significant effects on the capital structure of Korean multinational corporations. These findings show that 1) internationalization has little effect on the capital structure of Korean firms, and 2) Korean multinational corporations need to reduce bankruptcy costs and enhance profitability if they want to lower their debt/equity ratios.