This paper examines how a firm's financial distress and the legal environment regarding the ease of bankruptcy reorganization can alter product market competition and supplier-buyer relationships. We identify three effects, predation, bail-out, and abetment, that can change firms' behavior from...

The presence of strategic customers may force an already financially distressed firm into a death spiral: Sensing the firm's financial difficulty, customers may wait strategically for deep discounts in liquidation sales. In turn, such waiting lowers the firm's profitability and increases the...