This study aims to scrutinise the external capital structure in Hungary from the 1970s to recent years. On the one hand, this paper uses a combined analysis of external debt and equity, and, on the other hand, it makes an effort to apply a couple of corporate finance principles to a macro-economic setting, attempting to test the corporate model on a national economy from the perspective of the sources and uses of global funds and their return. At the same time, the corporate analogue has its limitations.