| Summary: | This thesis investigates into the capital structure of public companies in the UK. It consists of two empirical chapters. The first chapter extends market timing theory of capital structure as first proposed by Baker and Wurgler (2002) by looking at the effects of several market timing variables on the corporate financing decisions in the UK. The second study examines the effects of credit rating and corporate governance on capital structure. The sample period covers the most recent seven years. Also, I divide the whole sample period into two periods that are before and during the financial crisis in 2008, to control for the potential effects of financial crisis on the empirical relationships that are investigated in this study. Based on the capital structure theories, I find mixed evidences that support and different from the theories, and I observe the influences of financial crisis on the research issues that I aim to investigate, which shows the effect of financial crisis can be a real consideration on the capital structure of UK companies.
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