{"title":"How hotel firm value fluctuates with alternative leveraging strategies","authors":"Ying Chen, Eric Valenzuela, Don Capener","doi":"10.1111/ajes.12528","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>This study empirically examines the impact of leverage and capital structure on firm value for the US hotel industry from 1991 to 2017. We find strong evidence that leverage positively relates to firm value for firms in the hotel industry. This relationship is most robust for hotel firms with low financial health, consistent with the theory that firms signal positive information through capital structure. We also find that the relationship between leverage and firm value was weakened during the financial crisis, particularly for firms close to financial distress. Our results suggest that hotel management, creditors, and investors should pay attention to the magnifying effect of leverage on firm performance and the impact of financial crises on the value of debt. This study's empirical results also support the idea that firms in the hotel industry signal to outside investors through debt.</p>","PeriodicalId":47133,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Economics and Sociology","volume":"83 1","pages":"177-197"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9000,"publicationDate":"2023-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"American Journal of Economics and Sociology","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajes.12528","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This study empirically examines the impact of leverage and capital structure on firm value for the US hotel industry from 1991 to 2017. We find strong evidence that leverage positively relates to firm value for firms in the hotel industry. This relationship is most robust for hotel firms with low financial health, consistent with the theory that firms signal positive information through capital structure. We also find that the relationship between leverage and firm value was weakened during the financial crisis, particularly for firms close to financial distress. Our results suggest that hotel management, creditors, and investors should pay attention to the magnifying effect of leverage on firm performance and the impact of financial crises on the value of debt. This study's empirical results also support the idea that firms in the hotel industry signal to outside investors through debt.
期刊介绍:
The American Journal of Economics and Sociology (AJES) was founded in 1941, with support from the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, to encourage the development of transdisciplinary solutions to social problems. In the introduction to the first issue, John Dewey observed that “the hostile state of the world and the intellectual division that has been built up in so-called ‘social science,’ are … reflections and expressions of the same fundamental causes.” Dewey commended this journal for its intention to promote “synthesis in the social field.” Dewey wrote those words almost six decades after the social science associations split off from the American Historical Association in pursuit of value-free knowledge derived from specialized disciplines. Since he wrote them, academic or disciplinary specialization has become even more pronounced. Multi-disciplinary work is superficially extolled in major universities, but practices and incentives still favor highly specialized work. The result is that academia has become a bastion of analytic excellence, breaking phenomena into components for intensive investigation, but it contributes little synthetic or holistic understanding that can aid society in finding solutions to contemporary problems. Analytic work remains important, but in response to the current lop-sided emphasis on specialization, the board of AJES has decided to return to its roots by emphasizing a more integrated and practical approach to knowledge.