기업의 사회적 책임활동이 자본구조에 미치는 영향

This study is to investigate whether the capital structure may be explained by the stakeholder theory by analyzing the effect of corporate social responsibility on the capital structure. The level of corporate social responsibility has been measured by the KEJI(Korean Economic Justice Institute). The results of empirical analysis show the followings. First, the KEJIs of firms are negatively associated with the debt ratios estimated by market value as well as book value. That is, as the level of corporate social responsibility increases, the debt ratio decreases. It implies that the managers of firms consider the interests of stakeholders in addition to shareholders and bondholders when they make a choice of capital structure. Second, whereas the KEJI does not affect the debt ratio measured by market value before the financial crisis of 2008, it is negatively associated with the debt ratio after the financial crisis. Finally, the additional robustness tests have been analyzed to avoid the endogeneity problem by constructing two portfolios grouped by the size and profitability of firms. It was found that the KEJI affects the debt ratio negatively in all the subgroup portfolios.