Empirical study of the determinants of capital structure of listed commercial banks in China

Due to the specialty of the commercial Banks, the leverage ratio is generally considered to be determined by the capital adequacy control. However, the latest evidence (Gropp and Heider, 2007, Monica Octavia and Rayna Brown, 2008) shows the actual situation of domestic commercial Banks is not the case. In this paper, we explore the determinants of capital structure of listed commercial bank in china by combining the influence factors of capital structural standard with the lowest capital adequacy requirement. The results show that the lowest capital adequacy requirement has great influence on the capital structure of listed commercial bank in china, but the determinants of capital structure can explain the leverage level very well. Moreover, we examine the macro economic factors and find that the growth of GDP has also great influence on the capital structure of listed commercial bank in china.