TY - BOOK AU - Demirci,Irem AU - Huang,Jennifer AU - Sialm,Clemens ED - National Bureau of Economic Research. TI - Government Debt and Corporate Leverage: International Evidence T2 - NBER working paper series PY - 2017/// CY - Cambridge, Mass. PB - National Bureau of Economic Research N1 - April 2017; Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers N2 - We investigate the impact of government debt on corporate financing decisions. We document a negative relation between government debt and corporate leverage using data on 40 countries between 1990 and 2014. This negative relation holds only for government debt that is financed domestically and is stronger for larger and more profitable firms and in countries with more developed equity markets. In order to address potential endogeneity concerns, we use an instrumental variable approach based on military spending and a quasi-natural experiment based on the introduction of the Euro currency. Our findings suggest that government debt crowds out corporate debt UR - https://www.nber.org/papers/w23310 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w23310 ER -