Corporate Capital Structure and Firm Value: International Evidence on the Special Roles of Bank Debt
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We contribute to the corporate capital structure and bank specialness literatures by studying the effects of bank debt on corporate value. We apply novel methodology to almost 60,000 firms in 110 countries over 17 years – over 300,000 total observations. We find that bank term loans and credit lines are strongly positively associated with firm value, but only when employed very intensively – at 90%or more of total corporate debt. These effects are consistent with bank specialness at high-intensity levels. These findings support previously untested theoretical predictions that bank specialness would be stronger or exist only at high bank debt intensities. Our results hold broadly, but are stronger for credit-constrained firms – small firms and those in low-income countries. Channel analysis suggestzs that term loans boost short-term firm performance more, while credit lines better promote long-run growth. The findings suggest future research topics and have policy implications, particularly during the COVID-19 crisis.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".