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...

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...

Secured lenders have recently demanded a new condition in distressed debt restructurings: competing secured lenders must lose priority. We model the implications of this "creditor-on-creditor violence" trend. In our dynamic model, secured lenders enjoy higher priority in default. However,...

In recent years, acquisition made by distressed firms have become economically important. This paper explores the rationale behind such acquisitions using a natural experiment. Exploiting a recent tax change, which reduces debt restructuring costs for certain creditors and decreases bankruptcy...

We present a stochastic simulation model for estimating forward-looking corporate probability of default and loss given default. We formulate the model in a discrete time frame, apply capital-budgeting techniques to define the relationships that identify the default condition, and solve the...

Assuming benevolent managers, the debt-overhang problem suggests that distressed firms generally refrain from issuing equity. In contrast, agency theory predicts that distressed firm managers have strong self-interests to finance even deteriorating projects through equity issuance. This paper...

We estimate the economic costs of financial distress due to lost sales, by exploiting cross-supplier variation in real estate assets and leverage and the timing of real estate shocks. We show that for the same client buying from different suppliers, its purchases from distressed suppliers...

This paper examines the performance of two commonly applied bankruptcy prediction models, the accounting ratio-based Altman Z-Score model, and the structural Distance to Default model which currently underlies Morningstar's Financial Health Grade for public companies (Morningstar 2008)....

This paper studies the impact of executive pensions and deferred compensation plans, collectively known as "inside debt'', on corporate failures. I find that, on average, a firm whose CEO holds a larger fraction of the firm's debt than equity (i.e., when the ratio of the CEO's inside debt...

What should a distressed buyer’s sourcing strategy be? We find that this depends on the dynamics in a potential in-court bankruptcy. To establish causality, we use a novel sourcing data set in combination with a unique quasi-natural experimental setting provided by a regulatory shock that...