ABSTRACT
The paper aims to determine the effect of financial leverage on the performance of Vietnamese small and medium enterprises during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the agency theory and pecking order theory, combined with the quantitative method, the financial leverage and COVID-19 are statistically significant factors affecting the performance of small and medium enterprises in Vietnam. Significantly, the author emphasizes that financial leverage has a positive effect on the performance during the pandemic. Furthermore, there is the existence of homoscedasticity and no-autocorrelation in the model when using feasible general least squares. It confirms that the model estimation is unbiased and reliable. © 2022 IGI Global. All rights reserved.