This study investigates the effect of flexible tax enforcement on firms’ excess goodwill using unique manually collected data on taxpaying credit rating in China from 2014 to 2021. We document that A-rated taxpayer firms have less excess goodwill; A-rated firms reduce excess goodwill by 0.005...

We examine the impact on a firm when it is exogenously forced to switch its bank relationship from one branch to another branch of the same bank. We show the effect depends directly on the relative balance between the hard accounting information provided to the bank by the firm, as part of the...

Credit default swaps (CDS) introduce frictions in debt renegotiations because they alter the incentives of creditors insured with CDS to favor bankruptcy instead of restructuring debt out-of-court. Such renegotiation frictions can increase bond spreads by increasing distress resolution costs....

This study examines the sophistication of rating agencies in incorporating managerial risk-taking incentives into their credit risk evaluation. We measure risk-taking incentives using two proxies: the sensitivity of managerial wealth to stock return volatility (vega) and the sensitivity of...

We provide the first empirical analysis on the effects of credit default swaps (CDS) on corporate distress resolution with a focus on debt recovery rate. CDS contracts are settled shortly after the occurrence of credit events such as restructuring or bankruptcy filings and, presumably, should...

In this paper, we examine the effect of shareholder governance mechanisms on the firms' credit risk through credit default swap spreads. Our results suggest that higher antitakeover provisions decrease the price of debt. We find that on average, addition of one antitakeover provision lowers the...

We are the first to investigate the effect of board gender diversity on default risk across countries, largely focusing on various aspects of institutional setting at country-level. Intuitively, board gender diversity is likely to influence default risk as women on the board improves the board...

We find that co-opted boards facilitate more erratic and arbitrary decision-making, contributing towards default risk. A one standard deviation increase in co-option increases default risk by 11% relative to normal levels. Supporting the notion that co-option makes decision-making more erratic,...

This paper investigates whether overleverage identifies companies' strategic default incentives. The results show that overlevered firms have lower equity beta than their counterparts. The strategic default option becomes more valuable when the firms are overlevered. Firms are more likely to be...

In this paper, we compare different methods for computing default probabilities using a sample of banks that experienced financial distress during the 2007–2009 global financial crisis. The traditional KMV-Merton model for firm valuation, credit ratings by rating agencies and a recently...