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This research is an ambitious attempt to study the determinants of debt maturity in the Indian corporate sector using panel OLS regression methodology. The corporate debt portfolio analysis discloses that the dominance of traditional debt instruments, predominance of banks, declining trend in the issue of debentures, conservative financing strategies, and absence of innovative and diverse debt instruments for investment, speculation, and risk diversification are the major imperfections prevail in the corporate debt market. The corporate debt market imperfections and the dysfunctional corporate bond market have hampered the growth and development of business and industry. The Indian corporate sector has been characterized by a moderate level of long term debt maturity. This research finds that growth options, firm size, firm quality, asset maturity, corporate tax rate, term structure, and asset variance jointly determine the debt maturity. These research findings lead to the conclusion that agency cost hypothesis, signaling hypothesis, liquidity risk hypothesis, matching hypothesis, and tax hypothesis determine debt maturity in the Indian corporate sector.

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Dr. Venugopalan T is Assistant Professor in Department of Commerce, Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur Khalsa college, University of Delhi. He received his masters degree in Commerce from the University of Calicut, and his Ph.D. in finance from the Faculty of Management Studies (FMS), University of Delhi. His area of specialization is Accounting and Finance

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