Journal ArticleDOI
Optimal "Soft" or "Tough" Bankruptcy Procedures
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In this paper, the authors describe optimal bankruptcy laws in a framework with asymmetric information, and reinterpret much of the evidence on the performance of Chapter 11, the "rather soft" U.S. reorganization procedure, questioning many negative conclusions.Abstract:
This article describes optimal bankruptcy laws in a framework with asymmetric information. The key idea is that the financial distress of a firm is not observed by its lenders for quite a while. As early rescues are much cheaper than late rescues, it may pay if the creditors are forgiving in bankruptcy, thereby inducing the revelation of difficulties as early as possible. Either “tough” or “soft” bankruptcy laws can be optimal, depending on the parameters. This implies that mandatory one-size-fits-all bankruptcy procedures cannot be optimal. “Hybrid” procedures, which try to combine elements of soft and tough procedures, are found to be redundant, and possibly harmful. Absolute priority rules may be helpful as a part of tough procedures, but their introduction is (partly) inconsistent with the design of soft procedures. The article also reinterprets much of the evidence on the performance of Chapter 11, the “rather soft” U.S. reorganization procedure, questioning many negative conclusions.read more
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Journal ArticleDOI
Access to Collateral and Corporate Debt Structure: Evidence from a Natural Experiment
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigate how firms respond to strengthening of creditor rights by examining their financial decisions following a securitization reform in India and find that the reform led to a reduction in secured debt, total debt, debt maturity, and asset growth.
Journal ArticleDOI
Access to Collateral and Corporate Debt Structure: Evidence from a Natural Experiment
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigate how firms respond to strengthening of creditor rights by examining their financial decisions following a securitization reform in India and find that the reform led to a reduction in secured debt, total debt, debt maturity, asset growth and an increase in liquidity hoarding by firms.
Journal ArticleDOI
Bankruptcy Decision Making
TL;DR: In this article, the authors model the shutdown decision as the exercise of a real option and show that the decision may loom so large in the early parts of the bankruptcy case that it erases any significant difference between Chapter 11 and many alternative market-mimicking regimes.
Journal ArticleDOI
Is no news bad news? Information transmission and the role of ''early warning'' in the principal-agent model
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors study optimal incentive contracts when the agent has a private signal of the likelihood of the project's success, and they show that the principal can costlessly extract this signal if and only if this does not lead her to intervene in the project in any way that will influence its outcome.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
An empirical investigation of self-attitudes.
TL;DR: The self has been called an image, a conception, a concept, a feeling, an internalization, a self looking at oneself, and most commonly simply the self as discussed by the authors.
Journal ArticleDOI
Incentive-Compatible Debt Contracts: The One-Period Problem
Douglas Gale,Martin Hellwig +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, it was shown that the optimal, incentive-compatible debt contract is the standard debt contract and that the second-best level of investment never exceeds the first-best and is strictly less when there is a positive probability of costly bankruptcy.
Journal Article
Incentive-compatible debt contracts: The one-period problem
Douglas Gale,Martin Hellwig +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, it was shown that the optimal, incentive-compatible debt contract is the standard debt contract and that the second-best level of investment never exceeds the first-best and is strictly less when there is a positive probability of costly bankruptcy.
A theory of predation based on agency problems in financial contracting
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyzed the optimal financial contract in light of this predatory threat and found that the optimal contract balances the benefits of deterring predation by relaxing financial constraints against the cost of exacerbating incentive problems.
Posted Content
A Theory of Predation Based on Agency Problems in Financial Contracting
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyzed the optimal financial contract in light of this predatory threat and found that the optimal contract balances the benefits of deterring predation by relaxing financial constraints against the cost of exacerbating incentive problems.
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