We augment the LLSV creditor rights index with a new “restructuring index” that measures the incentives provided to creditors to grant concessions outside formal bankruptcy. We study the joint impact of the two indexes on a firm's leverage policy. We show that the two indexes have at most a...

Stronger creditor rights reduce credit costs and thus may allow firms to increase leverage and investments, but also increase distress costs and thus may prompt firms to lower leverage and undertake risk-reducing but unprofitable investments. Using a German bankruptcy law reform, on average, we...

In the last dozen years, economists have produced a considerable body of research suggesting that the historical origin of a country’s laws is highly correlated with a broad range of its legal rules and regulations, as well as with economic outcomes. Much of this research has dealt with rules...

We examine the ex ante effect of an exogenous reduction in secured creditor rights on corporate financial and investment policy. We find that firms increase corporate leverage using both the reduced distress costs of secured debt and the positive externalities the lower secured creditor rights...

In 2002, a legal reform introduced in India allowed secured creditors to seize and liquidate the defaulter's assets. We study firms' choice between capital and labor in response to these strengthened creditor rights by exploiting variation in their pre-policy proportion of collateralizable...

We examine how creditor protection affects firms with different levels of owners' and managers' personal costs of bankruptcy. Theoretically, we show that firms with high personal costs of bankruptcy borrow and invest more under a more debtor-friendly management stay system, whereas firms with...

We examine whether the increased creditor protection under the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) affects suppliers' provision of trade credit to their customers with high default risk. Employing a difference-in-differences analysis for a sample of U.S. public...

I estimate the relationship between increased creditor rights and legal expenditures of debtor corporations by analyzing the effect of a major securitization law in India allowing secured creditors to seize collateral. While the law decreased spending on legal proceedings commonly used by firms...

Using the state-level adoption of anti-recharacterization laws (ARLs), this paper examines how strengthening the rights of some creditors affects other creditors’ claims. The adoption of an ARL significantly increases the rights of securitization creditors by denying bankruptcy court judges’...

In many countries, lenders are restricted in their access to information about borrowers' past defaults. The authors study this provision in a model of repeated borrowing and lending with moral hazard and adverse selection. They analyze its effects on borrowers' incentives and access to credit,...