This study investigates empirical issues that have received little attention in the previous research in the Korean capital market. It is to find any financial determinants on the capital structure for the firms listed in the KOSDAQ (Korea Securities Dealers Automated Quotation). Coupled with one of the hypotheses to test for any financial attributes or characteristics on the capital structure, another test is performed to find any possible discriminating factors by utilizing a robust methodology, which may distinguish between the firms belonging the 'prime section' and the 'venture section' in terms of their financial aspects. Moreover, the null hypothesis that the changing trend or movement of a firm's capital structure with respect to its industry mean (or median) may be random, is also tested for the sample firms listed in the KOSDAQ stock market. For the book-value based debt ratios, size(INSIZE), growth(GROWTH),
Market to book value of equity(MVBV), volatility(VOLATILITY), market value of equity (MVE) and section dummy (SECTION) showed their statistically significant effects on the book-value based leverage ratios, respectively. On the other hand, size(INSIZE), growth(GROWTH), market value of equity(MVE), beta(BETA) and section dummy (SECTION) showed their statistically significant effects on the market-value based leverage ratios, respectively. Moreover, this study found an interesting result that a firm belonging to each corresponding industry has a tendency for reversion toward its mean and median leverage ratios over the five-year tested period.
Key Words: KOSDAQ, Capital Structure, Financial Characteristics, Fisher exact test, Mean reversion
