Determinantes de la estructura financiera en la industria manufacturera: la industria de alimentos.

The article's objective is to determine the mechanism and specific firm variables that affect firm's financial structure within the Mexican food industry during 2000-2009. For this purpose, we develop a pooled OLS econometric analysis that allows identifying these variables and shows that tangible assets are the main variable considered by these companies while making their funding decisions. This result supports the theory of hierarchy of order, which says that companies with a higher proportion of tangible assets are more leveraged as these can act as collateral assets and minimize interest conflicts between shareholders and creditors, as well as the information asymmetry among these agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]