This paper examines the impact of product market competition and corporate governance on the cost of debt financing and the use of bond covenants. We find that more antitakeover provisions are associated with a lower cost of debt only in competitive industries. Because they are exposed to higher...

This paper examines optimal two-period financial contracts between firms in a product market on the one side and banks as creditors on the other side. Similar to the Bolton-Scharfstein contracts, banks can mitigate the moral hazard problem of truthfully revealing the ex ante unknown profits of...

We address the question of how lending market competition, measured by the bargaining power of banks, affects the agency costs of debt finance. It is shown that intensified lending market competition will lead to lower lending rates and investment return distributions which are shifted towards...