I examine the effects of contemporaneous credit rating and watchlist announcements on the over-the-counter U.S. corporate bond market. I find significant negative daily abnormal returns (-2.91%) over a ten-day window associated with a downgrade announcement with negative watch. The effect is...

We structurally estimate a set of firm- and time-varying measures of the magnitude of external financial constraints. By considering the entire capital structure—equity and debt of various maturities—we identify on which external financing margin(s) a firm is constrained at a given point in...