This paper examines the impact of stock liquidity on firm bankruptcy risk. Using the Securities and Exchange Commission … decimalization regulation as a shock to stock liquidity, we establish that enhanced liquidity decreases default risk. Stocks with the … highest default risk experience the largest improvements. We find two mechanisms through which stock liquidity reduces firm …

Market liquidity is informative of future corporate defaults but in a nuanced way. A firm's probability of default … increases with market illiquidity only when the firm's funding liquidity is tight and/or solvency position is weak. Such …