Financing patterns and corporate investment relationship : a brief overview

Abstract

Investment is an important economic variable and, therefore, it is important to have an understanding of the factors that determine its evolution over time. One aspect that has been highlighted in recent research is that corporate investment behavior is influenced by the financial structure of firms. In fact, if the hypothesis of imperfect capital markets holds, there is no perfect substitutability between the various sources of funds, which may affect the investment expenses of firms and lead to a situation of underinvestment. In this paper, a brief overview of different explanations for the relationship between financing patterns and investment behavior of firms is presented.