Ensuring that a firm has sufficient liquidity to finance valuable projects that occur in the future is at the heart of the practice of financial management. However, although discussion of these issues goes back at least to Keynes (1936), a substantial literature on the ways in which firms...

Ample literature builds on the notion that rising real estate values boost corporate secured borrowing ("collateral channel"). A new contract-level database allows us to observe the value, location, age, and end-use of firms' real estate holdings and all debts raised against those assets. Firms...

Recent reforms across Eastern European countries gave more flexibility and information for parties to engage in secured debt transactions. The menu of assets legally accepted as collateral was enlarged to include movable assets (e.g., machinery and equipment). Generalized...

We use a unique dataset to show how firms in Europe used credit lines during the financial crisis. We find that firms with restricted access to credit (small, private, non-investment grade, and unprofitable) draw more funds from their credit lines during the crisis than their large, public,...