Research Information System
European Journal Of Transport And Infrastructure Research, vol.19, no.3, pp.177-195, 2019 (Journal Indexed in SSCI)
The privatisation and liberalisation waves have been increasing the number of private companies in
the aviation industry. This, in turn, necessitates new policy analyses on major financial decisions
regarding capital structure, corporate governance and investments. Among these major topics, the
research about the association between capital structure and financial performance of the aviation
companies largely focuses on the airlines. But a comparable analysis for the airport companies is less
explored. The goal of this study is to contribute to the literature by analysing how the capital
structure of the publicly traded airport companies affects their profitability and market valuation.
Using an unbalanced panel data sample of 29 publicly traded airports from 20 countries over the
1989-2017 period, our findings suggest that higher total and long-term leverage tend to decrease
return on assets whereas they are positively associated with return on equity.