Impacts of accession differentiated levels of corporate governance on capital structure of brazilian companies

Abstract

The Substitution Hypothesis assumes that both debt as Corporate Governance can reduce agency conflicts, allowing the manager to choose one of these options. In this sense, the aim of this research was to verify if the adherence to the Corporate Governance practices reduces the leverage of the Brazilian companies. In addition, we analyzed other variables such as profitability, size, and depreciation, whose influence on decision-making process about the leverage of the organizations has been tested in several studies. The statistical method employed, after the tests required, was the Generalized Least Square (GLS). Regarding to the variables of the Corporate Governance, the results of levels 1 and 2 were not statistically significant. Already the New Market indicated a inverse relations with the debt, confirming the hypothesis presented in this paper, and its coefficient was statistically significant. Concerning the profitability, the result achieved was also consistent with the proposition presented, in which, the higher the profitability of a company, the lower will be its indebtedness. The coefficient of the variable Depreciation contradicted the initial hypothesis, indicating a direct relationship between it and leverage. Despite the inconsistency, such a result has support in other studies published. The size factor did not reveal statistically significant and, therefore, there has been no further inference about the same.