An Empirical Analysis on Capital Structure, Ownership Structure and Firm Performance: Evidence from India

The study has attempted to empirically examine the effect of capital structure and ownership structure on the accounting performance of Indian manufacturing firms listed and traded on Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) of India during the period of 2009-16. The capital structure is represented by the debt to equity ratio whereas the various forms of ownership structure are represented by percentage of domestic promoters’ ownership, percentage of foreign promoters’ ownership and percentage of institutional ownership. Besides, return on assets and return on net worth are introduced to measure firms’ accounting performance. The study is based on panel data analysis. We have introduced Fixed Effect Model for the regression on such panel data. We estimated Restricted F test, Lagrange Multiplier Test and Hausman Test for the purpose of final selection of appropriate model for our regression analysis. Finally, the study found a significantly negative effect of capital structure on accounting performance of our sampled firms. However, the study found a significant and positive impact of almost all forms of ownership structure on firms’ accounting performance. Thus, the study proposed the firms’ accounting performance as the function of almost all the variables of capital and ownership structure used in the study