Sector Analysis of Debt Maturity in Portugal and Spain

The main purpose of the present study is an empirical analysis of the factors influencing debt maturity in the different sectors of activity, using 16 494 non-financial Portuguese and Spanish companies, both listed and unlisted, over a time horizon from 2010 to 2015. Using the fixed effects model, we analyzed the influence of the companies characteristics’ explanatory variables, as well as the influence of the variables of country characteristics. The results show that the companies characteristics are the major drivers in the choice of debt maturity, given the empirical evidence found in all sectors analyzed. Despite this disclosure, only the high rating variable shows a consistent and significant negative influence in all sectors of activity. In the other hand, the characteristic of corporate indebtedness shows a positive and significant influence on debt maturity in most sectors of activity, failing only in the transport sector. Regarding to the countries characteristics, the results point to a weak evidence of the influence on debt maturity, not being possible to find a characteristic that influences equally all the sectors of activity.