The aim of this paper is to investigate the choice between debt and equity simultaneously with the decision between short- and long-term debt for a large sample of emerging markets from Latin America. In order to do this, we test a model (BARCLAY; MARX; SMITH JR., 2003) of joint capital structure and debt maturity determination for a sample of 986 firms from Latin America in the period 1990-2002, employing the Generalized Method of Moments on a system of equations. The empirical results support three main findings. First, capital structure and debt maturity are financial policy complements in Latin America. Second, there is a substantial dynamic component in the determination of debt maturity that has been neglected by previous research. Finally, firms face moderate adjustment costs towards their optimal maturity. Results are robust to variation in sample composition in terms or countries, industries, and years.
Capital structure; Debt maturity; Trade-off; Dynamic panel data analysis; Latin America
