ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book given an overview of the capital structure controversy. It shows that firms will adjust their capital structure toward the industry mean when it is above the mean. The book answers the question of "What determines corporate leverage?" posed in the introduction. It utilizes nine independent variables, business risk, and industry dummies in our analysis. The book finds that there was a positive and statistically-significant association between the salary and bonus of the CEOs of the 336 largest US corporations, and the debts these firms incurred during the 1989-1999 time period. It attempts to determine whether a firm's ownership structure affects its capital structure and whether these effects are the same for New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and NASDAQ dummy variable (NASDAQ) firms. The book finds that NYSE and NASDAQ firms have somewhat different capital structures.
