摘要：We study the capital structure dynamics of Central and Eastern European firms in order to get a betterunderstanding of the quantitative and qualitative development of the financial systems in this region.The dynamic model we use endogenizes the target leverage as well as the adjustment speed and isapplied to microeconomic data for ten countries. We find that during the transition process firmsgenerally increased their leverage, lowering the gap between actual and target leverage. Profitabilityand age are the most robust determinants of capital structure targets. Older firms attract more bankdebt, whereas profitability decreases firms’ leverage targets. While banking system development hasin general enabled firms to get closer to their leverage targets, information asymmetries between firmsand banks are still important. As a result, firms prefer internal finance to bank debt (pecking orderbehaviour) and adjust leverage only slowly.
关键词：capital structure dynamics, transition economies, financial system development
