Cost of Debt Financing and Corporate Investment in the EU-27: Deleveraging and Profit Buffers Under Monetary Tightening

The Impact of Debt Maturity Structure on Financial Resilience: Evidence from Non-Financial Listed Firms on the Vietnamese Stock Market

How the maturity structure of corporate debt shapes firms’ capacity to withstand financial pressure remains understudied, particularly in bank-dependent emerging markets. This study examines whether greater reliance on short-term debt weakens firms’ ability to absorb financial shocks. Using quarterly panel data for non-financial listed firms on the Vietnamese stock market from 2015 to 2025, we construct an accounting-based measure of financial resilience (FR), defined as the ratio of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) to the sum of short-term debt and interest expense, and measure debt maturity structure (DMS) as the proportion of short-term debt in total interest-bearing debt. Firm fixed-effects models with quarterly time fixed effects and firm-clustered standard errors are used to estimate the relationship. The results consistently show that firms with a higher proportion of short-term interest-bearing debt exhibit significantly lower financial resilience across all model specifications. This negative relationship remains robust after controlling for alternative measures of financial leverage and using a logarithmic transformation of the dependent variable. The findings highlight the importance of debt maturity management as a key component of corporate financing strategy for firms and policymakers seeking to enhance financial resilience.

Nominal Anchors under Fiscal Dominance: Foreign-Rate Transmission and Monetary Policy in a Small Open Economy

Market competition in banking and asset-liability maturity mismatch of non-financial firms: Evidence from Vietnam

This study examines the effect of bank competition on corporate investment-financing maturity mismatch, utilizing a panel dataset of 498 listed firms in Vietnam from 2008 to 2024. Bank competition is measured using both structural and non-structural indicators, allowing for a nuanced assessment of market dynamics. The findings reveal a robust positive association between bank competition and maturity mismatch, suggesting that intensified competition leads firms to increase their reliance on short-term debt relative to long-term investment needs. This relationship holds under multiple robustness checks, including alternative variable constructions, fixed effects specifications, crisis period exclusions, and instrumental variable approaches. Mechanism analyses indicate that bank competition affects firms’ debt maturity structures, increasing both the proportion and scale of short-term borrowing. Heterogeneity tests further show that this effect is stronger among firms with higher bank debt dependence, greater financial constraints, and higher borrowing costs, while it is weaker in capital-intensive sectors.

Corporate Accrual Quality and Cost of Debt: Evidence from Vietnamese Listed Firms in the Construction and Real Estate Industry

Abstract This study investigates the impact of corporate accrual quality (CAQ) on the cost of debt within the highly leveraged construction and real estate sectors of Vietnam. Employing the modified Dechow and Dichev (2002) model to assess CAQ, the analysis utilizes Fixed Effects and System GMM estimators on a comprehensive panel dataset of 252 listed companies (1,630 annual observations) across the HOSE, HNX, and UPCoM exchanges, covering an effective regression timeframe from 2017 to 2023. The empirical findings reveal a strong negative correlation between CAQ and the cost of debt, confirming that creditors penalize low accrual quality by demanding greater risk premiums. Importantly, this study identifies a pronounced regulatory heterogeneity effect: enterprises listed on the strictly regulated HOSE benefit significantly from superior CAQ through reduced borrowing costs, whereas this cost reduction effect completely dissipates in the less transparent environments of the HNX and UPCoM. Consequently, the research provides critical implications for regulators enhancing financial stability, lenders refining credit risk assessments, and corporate managers strategically seeking to minimize the cost of capital.

Financial Regulatory Intensity and Corporate Liquidity Risk: Evidence from Chinese A-Share Listed Companies

Against the backdrop of escalating financial regulation in China, this study examines how regulatory enforcement intensity affects corporate liquidity risk among A-share listed non-financial firms over 2015–2024. We construct a composite regional regulatory intensity index (Enforce) integrating the frequency and monetary magnitude of administrative penalties issued by local securities regulators and employ firm- and year-fixed-effects panel regressions with the current ratio (CR) as the primary liquidity measure. We find that tighter regulatory enforcement significantly depresses the current ratio, consistent with a compliance-cost channel that constrains short-term debt-servicing capacity. Mediation analysis—conducted separately for each ESG sub-dimension and verified via bootstrap tests—reveals that the corporate governance dimension (G) generates a significant positive indirect effect (consistent partial mediation), the social responsibility dimension (S) generates a significant negative indirect effect (competing partial mediation), and the environmental dimension (E) yields no statistically significant indirect effect. Ownership-type heterogeneity tests confirm that non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs) are substantially more sensitive to regulatory tightening than state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Moderation analysis further shows that financial leverage plays a non-monotonic role: the regulation–liquidity effect is negative at low leverage levels and reverses to positive above an estimated threshold (Lev ≈ 0.56). Robustness is established through subsample regressions and a lagged-variable endogeneity test. These findings enrich the institutional finance literature and provide evidence-based guidance for differentiated regulatory policymaking.

Macroeconomic Determinants of Economic Integration in the European Union - case of FDI in Real Estate

This paper investigates determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the real estate sector across 26 European Union member states. Using two-way fixed effects panel regression models, we test whether: (H1) rising construction producer prices negatively affect real estate FDI, with a weaker effect in eurozone countries; and (H2) higher property tax burdens negatively affect real estate FDI, with a weaker effect in post-transition member states. Both hypotheses are confirmed at conventional significance levels. Construction price inflation deters foreign real estate investment, but the eurozone's macroeconomic stability, shared currency, and harmonized business rules substantially attenuate this deterrent. Property taxes also reduce FDI inflows, though this effect is largely neutralized in post-transition economies, where lower baseline asset prices, stronger capital appreciation expectations, and targeted tax incentive policies compensate for the tax burden. These findings have direct implications for investment climate policy in both eurozone and post-transition EU economies.