Foreign direct investment and capital structure adjustment speeds 

主讲人：芦东 (中国人民大学财政金融学院)

时间：11月24日（周四）14:00-15:30

会议形式：线上会议（发送自我简介至邮箱 xlgao@nsd.pku.edn.cn 获取会议信息）

摘要：Exploiting an arguably exogenous regulatory change in foreign direct investment (FDI), we investigate the effect of FDI on firms' financial constraint and the adjustment speed to the optimal capital structure. Our empirical results show that firms in deregulated industries of the FDI policies have lower levels of financial constraint and higher speed of leverage adjustment to the target level, especially for the ``under-levered''. We also find positive spillover effects to domestically-owned firms with no foreign interests within the deregulated industries. Moreover, the impact is more pronounced for firms in industries that are more dependent on external financing and in provinces with lower levels of financial depth. Our findings also imply that the dynamic rebalancing of capital structure brought by FDI inflows leads to an increase in firms' average productivity.

主讲人介绍：Dong Lu is associate professor in School of Finance at Renmin University of China. He received his PhD from Indiana University in 2017. His research interests are in financial market microstructure and international finance. He has published papers in the Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Controls, Macroeconomic Dynamics, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization.