SMEs capital structure: trade-off or pecking order theory: a systematic review

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to organize and present the literature related to firm’s capital structure across the years and find the most relevant publications and authors in the research area. Moreover, the authors pretend to fill the gap in the literature by studying different works and their compatibility with the main theories. Design/methodology/approach The systematic literature review is conducted by using the Scopus database. The methodology applied is through a concise searching considering keywords, the most cited papers, the latest publications and theories that explain small and medium enterprises (SMEs) capital structure. Findings Some key aspects about the capital structure of firms and SMEs are identified, such as documents per year, type of publications, the most used languages, the top journals, the most cited papers, the most productive and influential authors and the latest published papers. Research limitations/implications The information presented is only informative from the Scopus database. Hence, this work only gives a general orientation of the most relevant research and its tendency of this database. More exhaustive works could be done using different keywords and analyzing other firms’ characteristics. Practical implications This kind of study is effective in evaluating the scientific production and to find the most important contributions of the subject. Furthermore, this information is useful for researchers’ studies on SME capital structure to underline the research direction and to be acquainted with the literature tendency. Originality/value There are not similar works that delve into the literature respect to SME capital structure and compare the main theories in relation to empirical works. Therefore, a synthesized evolution of previous works related to the capital structure of firms and SMEs is presented.

Capital structure determinants of small and medium-sized enterprises: evidence from Central and Eastern Europe

“…Criticism of these models led to several further concepts. As Martinez et al (2019) and Kumar et al (2020) showed, two of them are relevant for SME sector.…”

“…Research on the SMEs' capital structure in CEE markets does not have a long tradition and is not as developed as in Western Europe (Mateev et al, 2013;Harc, 2015;Belas et al, 2018;Kenourgios et al, 2019). This assumption is supported by literature review conducted by Martinez et al (2019).…”

Multinational Dividend Policies: A Systematic Literature Review to Future

“…Subsequently, other fields of science adopt it, including studies on corporate finance. Martinez et al (2018) propose the literature's presentation and organization on the capital structure through a systematic review. They use Scopus' database to analyze the small and medium-sized companies' capital structure financial theories.…”

Analysis of Small Business Capital Structure

“…Структура капитала се у суштини односи на то како предузеће финансира своје укупне активности и напредак коришћењем различитих извора средстава. Другим речима, структура капитала предузећа је резултат низа ситуација, у којима се комбинују одлуке о финансирању предузетника, кредитна ограничења давалаца средстава и тржишни услови, који су сви условљени феноменом асиметричних информација (Martinez, L. B., Scherger, V., & Guercio, M. B., 2019). Структура капитала предузећа може се изразити применом бројних показатеља.…”