“…Previous studies have noted the importance of considering macroeconomic factors regarding capital structure (Cook and Tang, 2010; Frank and Goyal, 2009; Korajczyk and Levy, 2003), not least when global economic events tend to have significant domestic economic effects at the firm level. Although there is considerable research into the determinants of small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) capital structure, relatively little empirical research (Balios et al , 2016; Daskalakis et al , 2017; Demirgüç-Kunt et al , 2015; Ferrarini et al , 2017; Iqbal and Kume, 2014; Proença et al , 2014; Trinh and Phuong, 2016; Zeitun et al , 2017) has examined how capital structure changes during economic recessions, and how firms are affected in times of crisis. Halling et al (2016) have claimed that surprisingly little is known about the relationship between firms’ business cycles and their capital structures.…”