A Covenant, in general, is a promise undertaken by a company to its lenders or bondholders. Covenants are either operational or financial. This dissertation focuses mainly on financial covenants, which are commonly included in bonds and loan agreements in order to safeguard creditors' interest....

This paper introduces a measure that captures the premium in bond prices that is due to the value of creditor control. We estimate the premium as the difference in the bond price and an equivalent synthetic bond without control rights that is constructed using CDS contracts. Empirically, we find...

In many countries, bankruptcy is associated with low recovery by creditors. We develop a model of corporate credit markets in such an environment. Corporate credit is provided by either a bond market or risk-averse banks. Restructuring of insolvent firms happens out of court if in-court...

Credit default swaps (CDSs) are an effective tool to trade credit risk, and they can improve the corporate information environment. We find that firms use more public debt and less bank debt when CDSs reference their debt start trading. The results are robust to the endogeneity of CDS trading....

This paper investigates whether firm managers time debt issuances according to market liquidity conditions. Using transactions data in the U.S. market from July 2002 to December 2009, our results show that both the moment and volume of debt issuance are significantly associated with periods of...

We present a DSGE model where firms optimally choose among alternative instruments of external finance. The model is used to explain the evolving composition of corporate debt during the financial crisis of 2008-09, namely the observed shift from bank finance to bond finance, at a time when the...

We study how optimal bank capital and bond risk are influenced by deposit insurance, implicit guarantees, depositor preference, asset encumbrance, and bail-in resolution frameworks. We find that these features of bank financing change the optimal amount of bank capital. The net effect on bond...