We examine the impact of capital structure determinants on firm financial performance together with the mediation effect of firm leverage in Malaysia and Indonesia over the period of 1990-2010. Our results show that certain of the capital structure determinants directly affect firm financial performance. We also observe that only the Malaysian sample has a positive significant correlation between firm leverage and firm financial performance. Malaysian firms use external financing instead of internal financing to heighten performance. Our results also show that firm leverage plays a mediating role in Malaysia but not for the Indonesian sample. The asset structure, growth opportunities, liquidity, non-debt tax shield and interest rate are the attributes that were indirectly influenced by firm leverage on firm financial performance. Further analysis for multi-group analysis (MGA) in PLS was also used to test the equality of the parameter estimates. We observe that certain attribute coefficients in the determinants of capital structure and firm financial performance are significantly different between Malaysia and Indonesia. (C) 2018 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

This study examines capital structure determinants using a simultaneous causal model with interaction effects between manifest and latent variables. Partial Least Squares (PLS) is an approach to Structural Equation Models (SEM) that allows researchers to analyse the relationships simultaneously. It is interesting to compare and contrast this approach in analysing mediation relationships with the regression analysis, In addition to statistical data, logical arguments are presented supported by two case studies from PLS-SEM and regression models. We find that the choice between regression and PLS-SEM matters even with the simplest scenarios per item for constructs. This study's originality is the provision of new comparative analyses of PLS-SEM versus regression analysis in the context of capital structure determinants. The "indirect" and "mediate" macro syntax normal theory of the Sobel test, and the bootstrapping techniques are compared with PLS-SEM. We Lind that the PLS-SEM analysis provides less contradictory results than regression analysis in terms of detecting mediation effects,