Financial reports should provide useful information to shareholders and creditors. Directors, however, normally owe fiduciary duties to equity holders, not creditors. We examine whether this slant in fiduciary duties affects the likelihood that firms will use financial engineering to circumvent...

This article examines the relevance and viability of the legal capital regime as a mechanism in protecting creditors' interests and compares the different approaches adopted by the United States and European Union in regulating the matter. It ultimately argues that the latter should learn from...

Financial reports should provide useful information to shareholders and creditors. Directors, however, normally owe fiduciary duties to equity holders, not creditors. We examine whether this slant in fiduciary duties affects the likelihood that firms will use financial engineering to circumvent...

This paper considers lending to finance projects in a setting where repayment enforcement appears impossible. The loan was illegal and thus legally unenforceable. Creditors were incapable of applying private coercion to force repayment. Borrowers lacked both collateral and reputation capital....

We document insider opportunism in an insolvency regime that is characterized by weak creditor rights and uses an accounting rule to determine bankruptcy eligibility. Using a unique dataset of bankrupt firms from India, we show insiders manage earnings downward before filing for bankruptcy via...