부채비율이 수출·비수출 제조기업 퇴출에 미친 영향 : 글로벌 금융 위기 이전·금융 위기 기간 비교

This paper analyses how leverage affected exits of exporters and non-exporters among publicly listed manufacturing firms during 2004-2009 in Korea. Further, it estimates the effect of leverage by partitioning the sample period into the pre-crisis and the crisis periods to compare the effect on exits of exporters and non-exporters in each period. The main results are as follows. Firstly, an increase in leverage resulted in higher exit probability for non-exporters compared with exporters during the sample period. Secondly, when the sample period is split into the pre-crisis and the crisis periods the study finds that the sensitivity of exit to leverage was increased for both exporters and non-exporters during the crisis period compared with the pre-crisis period. Finally, while leverage had relatively similar effect on exits of exporters and non-exporters during the pre-crisis period it affected exits of non-exporters more severely during the crisis period. Implications from these findings are as follows. Firstly, it suggests financial variables such as leverage can be important factors for firm exit besides efficiency. Secondly, given that exporters are less likely to be financially constrained than non-exporters, exits of exporters can be less affected especially when the access to external finance is limited.