What factors are economically important in the capital structure decision of European firms?

Several factors previously identified in the finance literature are statistically significant in determining the long-term debt ratio of European firms. However, only age, size, current assets, and tangible assets have a meaningful economic impact. Tangible assets and firm size play a role in tradeoff theory and age is mentioned in pecking order theory, but our results provide only moderate support for these two theories of capital structure.