Capital Structure and Corporate Performance: Evidence from Jordan

This study is to investigate the effect which capital structure has had on corporate performanceusing a panel data sample representing of 167 Jordanian companies during 1989-2003. Ourresults showed that a firm’s capital structure had a significantly negative impact on the firm’sperformance measures, in both the accounting and market’s measures. We also found that theshort-term debt to total assets (STDTA) level has a significantly positive effect on the marketperformance measure (Tobin’s Q). The Gulf Crisis 1990-1991 was found to have a positiveimpact on Jordanian corporate performance while the outbreak of Intifadah in the West Bank andGaza in September 2000 had a negative impact on corporate performance.