The U.S. Chapter 11 bankruptcy has traditionally been viewed as equity friendly, with frequent absolute priority deviations (APDs) in favor of equity. By contrast, based on a more recent sample we find that both APDs and time spent in bankruptcy have declined dramatically. We hypothesize and...

We examine how equity-market frictions that restrict pessimistic trading, such as short-sale constraints, affect assessments of default risk. We find that these frictions decrease the usefulness of equity-market variables for identifying defaulting firms but increase their usefulness for...