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 develop hypotheses regarding the association between two types of creditor rights and bank loan losses. Contrary to prior research conclusions, bank lending risk is negatively associated with both restrictions on reorganization and the secured creditor being paid first. Using accounting...

We study how banks adjust their portfolios in response to a deterioration in creditor rights. We construct a comprehensive creditor rights index based on a series of quasi-natural experiments in Italy and exploit a unique proprietary credit-level database of one of the largest Italian banks. Our...

Using the difference-in-difference approach, we find that the staggered enactment of anti-recharacterization laws, which strengthened creditor rights by enhancing the ability of creditors to repossess collateral during bankruptcy, leads to higher cost of equity capital of the treated firms. We...

This paper provides a comprehensive theoretical and empirical analysis of "creditor rights" and "information sharing" throughout over 1.8 million public and private firms in Europe. We show that many of the outcomes associated with greater levels of creditor rights can be obtained with higher...

We examine entrepreneurial activity following the staggered adoption of modern-day fraudulent transfer laws in the United States. These laws strengthen unsecured creditors' rights and are particularly important for entrepreneurs whose personal assets commingle with the firm's. Using...

We study how creditor rights and culture interact with one another and influence corporate dividend payout policy. We identify two distinct substitution effects. First, creditors substitute poor legal standing with lower dividends, but only in countries defined as either individualist or with...