This paper empirically investigates the role played by relatively small banks in the Japanese local credit market. We test the hypothesis that small banks enhance the recovery rate from the financial distress and reduce the bankruptcy ratio of small firms. Empirical evidence suggests that small...

This paper studies the effects of making corporate sector assets eligible as collateral for central bank borrowing. Banks are willing to pay collateral premia on assets if they become eligible as collateral. Collateral premia make debt financing cheaper for eligible firms, which respond by...

I study how firms adjust leverage, maturity and cash to manage rollover risk, and show that time-variation in concentration of maturity dates arises endogenously. To avoid rollover risk, firms prefer long-term debt with dispersed maturity dates. However, severe negative shocks force firms to...

Intuition suggests that firms with higher cash holdings should be 'safer' and have lower credit spreads. Yet empirically, the correlation between cash and spreads is robustly positive. This puzzling finding can be explained by the precautionary motive for saving cash, which in our model causes...

We develop a unified framework to connect cash holding, debt maturity and mergers and acquisitions. We provide empirical support for four internally consistent predictions: i) equity and debt values of highly distressed firms are more sensitive to cash reserve than those of healthy firms; ii)...

In a typical "phoenix syndrome" scenario, a small business entrepreneur who controls the financially distressed Company A registers Company B, to which the assets of Company A are transferred in what appears to be fraudulent conveyance. Company B serves as a vehicle through which the business is...

Many firms choose to refinance their debt. We investigate the long run effects of this extended practice on credit ratings and credit spreads. We find that debt refinancing generates systematic rating downgrades unless a minimum firm value growth is observed. Deviations from this growth path...

I use the 2007-2008 financial crisis to gauge how internal financial resources and external financial constraints mitigate or worsen the impact of the crisis on default risk of US industrial firms. I identify heterogeneity in short-term funding needs at the onset of the crisis by exploiting...

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...

The problem of the firm bankruptcy prediction was investigated by foreign researchers in the 1930s and it still remains relevant. Since publishing of the major Altman's work (1968), based on multiple discriminant analysis, this methodological area has been considerably changed. Taking into...