In 2002, a legal reform introduced in India allowed secured creditors to seize and liquidate the defaulter's assets. We study firms' choice between capital and labor in response to these strengthened creditor rights by exploiting variation in their pre-policy proportion of collateralizable...

We estimate the economic costs of financial distress by exploiting cross-supplier variation in real estate assets and leverage, and the timing of real estate shocks. We show that for the same client buying from different suppliers, its purchases from distressed suppliers decline by an additional...

We show information spillovers limit the effectiveness of targeted debt relief programs. We study individuals who learn about the likelihood of debt relief from the recent experiences of workplace peers filing for bankruptcy protection. Peers granted bankruptcy can discharge debts, while peers...

We examine the impact of creditor control rights on corporate acquisitions. Nearly 75% of loan agreements include restrictions that limit borrower acquisition decisions throughout the life of the contract. Following a financial covenant violation, creditors use their bargaining power to tighten...

We document the negative effect of stock liquidity on default risk for a sample of 46 countries. We further find that default risk declines following the introduction of the Directive on Markets in Financial Instruments (MiFID)—an exogenous shock that increases liquidity. The effect of...

It is well understood that the equity of an insolvent firm can trade for a positive price so long as there is some positive probability that the firm will become solvent at some future point. Currently, however, this insight exists in the case law in an informal sense, while its use in the...

We consider a situation in which general financial products such as options, CDS, and other derivatives, are traded to investigate the effect of cross-ownerships on market stability. We prove the existence and uniqueness of a clearing payment vector under the assumption of the fictitious default...

We examine how creditor protection affects firms with different levels of owners' and managers' personal costs of bankruptcy. Theoretically, we show that firms with high personal costs of bankruptcy borrow and invest more under a more debtor-friendly management stay system, whereas firms with...

We analyze the impact of the Volcker Rule on a bank's earnings and default probability by using a stochastic control model where the bank maximizes its value by selecting an optimal dividend, recapitalization, and investment strategy. We calibrate the model to a sample of U.S. banks. Since the...