Análise das teorias Pecking Order e Trade-off no contexto de elevado endividamento de empresas brasileiras

Abstract

The theories, Pecking Order and Trade-Off, rival each other in explaining how companies are supposed to fund their assets. Determinants of leverage may have opposite expected relationships when interpreting each Theory. These determinants are expected to be more significant in contexts of financial crisis or heavy corporate indebtedness. Therefore the objective of this study was to verify if the relationship between the determinants of financial leverage, in the Brazilian scenario of high indebtedness of selected publicly-traded companies, adheres to the Trade-off or Pecking Order theories. In order to verify the relationship between determinant factors and the financial leverage of the companies, a multiple linear regression model was applied considering a sample of 217 companies. Profitability, growth, size and paid dividends index were considered as explanatory variables. The period considered was the year of 2015, period in which the indebtedness of these companies showed at a higher level (ECONOMATICA®, 2017). It was verified that the profitability has negative relation with the indebtedness, whereas, the size, growth and paid dividends index are related positively. In general, the results suggest that there is predominance of the Pecking Order theory in determining indebtedness. This scenario, deductively, contributed to the achievement of significant results in all analyzed dimensions, unlike some previous studies.