The influence of recession and macroeconomic variables on sectorial capital structure

Abstract

Abstract The aim of this paper is to analyze the influence of the recent recession and of macroeconomic variables over the indebtedness in Brazilian industry sectors. The gap derives from the preference for investigating the reaction of capital structure according to economic sectors. However, it has to be considered that industry sectors react differently to variations in the economic context, since they have different optimal points of capital structure composition. The relevance of the chosen topic lies in carrying out a sectorial analysis of the effect of recession and of macroeconomic variables on capital structure composition, identifying the most sensitive sectors. It is also relevant in terms of being based on classical financial theories applied to the current context, in order to help predict the proportion of debt given fluctuations in a set of macroeconomic variables. Standing out among the main contributions of this article are the analysis of the level of indebtedness of Brazilian companies given the occurrence of recession and variations in the macroeconomy, identifying sectors that are most exposed to modifying their capital structure due to these factors. Six research hypotheses were formulated and tested using multiple linear regression, with two-stage fixed effects based on panel data collected from 211 companies, classified into six sectors, with data relating to the first quarter of 2010 up to the first quarter of 2018. The results revealed that the recent Brazilian recession was relevant for the capital structure of the sectors studied, with inflation only being significant for the health sector. The level of indebtedness of the basic materials sector was shown to be the most dependent on economic fluctuations and that of telephony and utilities was shown to be the least dependent. In addition, it was verified that the company-specific variables have greater relevance in determining capital structure compared to the macroeconomic ones.