The capital structure of agricultural enterprises in the Visegrad countries

Abstract

The Visegrad countries - or the V-4 countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia - is strong regional cooperation of four EU member states in Eastern-Central-Europe aimed at strengthening the positions of the members on both a European and a global level. The aim of this research is to analyse the capital structure of the agricultural and food companies in the V4 Member States. The results show that more profitable companies were less dependent on debt finance, while the fast-growing companies had limited access to the financial market. Company size had a significant effect only in the Czech Republic. Overall, the capital structure seemed to be strongly affected by the farm structure and the relative company size.

Keywords

• agriculture
• food industry
• leverage
• pecking order theory