Do industry differences affect firm-specific capital structure determinants?

The paper explores whether, and how, capital structure determinants differ across industries. Specifically, we investigate whether the typical capital structure determinants of size, profitability, asset tangibility, non-debt-tax-shields and liquidity affect, in a statistically different way, how capital structure is determined across four different industries: manufacturing, commerce, services, and tourism. We show that even though industry effects have been looked at in the various capital structure determination studies, they have not been thoroughly studied in capital structure literature. We apply an interaction effects methodological approach and show that capital structure determinants do differ in terms of magnitude and direction across industries, concluding that industry specifications should be investigated more thoroughly when exploring the capital structure determination puzzle.