This paper addresses two issues encountered in the empirical financial distress literature: a-theoretical treatment of leverage and product-market competition as predictors of financial distress hazard; and lack of attention to frailty as a potential source of bias in reported estimates. We...

In this article, we show that only distressed firms not identified as distressed by creditors are able to transfer wealth from creditors to shareholders. Using the number of years to future bankruptcy as a proxy for genuine distress and measures based on observable firm characteristics as...