Capital Structure Adjustment in Listed Oil Palm Firms: Measurement-Aligned Evidence from Indonesia and Malaysia

Listed oil palm firms combine long-lived biological and processing assets with financing needs that consolidated company ratios may not represent accurately. Using a balanced panel of 53 listed firms (19 Indonesian and 34 Malaysian) and 424 firm-year observations for 2017–2024, this study constructs activity-aligned measures from audited segment disclosures and estimates leverage persistence. The prespecified benchmark is a full two-step System GMM model with Windmeijer-corrected standard errors, collapsed instruments, ex ante regressor classifications, and year indicators. All four Malaysian debt-to-assets-ratio (DAR) models satisfy the available diagnostic criteria and imply annual adjustment speeds of 12.56–19.35%. Liquidity is negatively associated with DAR; profitability is insignificant. The Indonesian models are inadmissible because 27 instruments exceed 19 firms, with additional persistence or bias failures; their coefficients are not interpreted. Dynamic fixed-effects and split-panel-jackknife estimates show positive DAR persistence in both countries but different adjustment magnitudes and country rankings. Pooled DAR interactions are also inadmissible. Debt-to-equity estimates differ substantially, indicating denominator-related parameter instability. The results support cautious evidence of dynamic leverage adjustment while showing that adjustment speed, country ordering, and determinant inference depend on estimator and measurement choice.