We find a significant positive relation between changes in policy uncertainty and changes in credit spreads. Macroeconomic conditions, including general uncertainty, do not explain this result, which also holds when we use instrumental variables to address endogeneity issues. The impact of policy uncertainty is greater for firms that operate in regulation-intensive industries, face high tax rates, or are dependent on government spending. It is also stronger for firms that engage in political activities or rely on external financing. We conclude that policy uncertainty has a significant effect on firms’ borrowing costs, with exposure to government policies representing an important channel.

We study the effects of country-level creditor protections on the firm-level choice of debt structure concentration. Using data from forty-six countries, we show that firms form more concentrated debt structures in countries with stronger creditor protection. We propose a trade-off framework of optimal debt structure and show that in strong creditor rights regimes, the benefit of forming concentrated structures outweighs its cost. Because strong creditor protections increase liquidation bias, firms choose concentrated debt structures to improve the probability of successful distressed debt renegotiations. Firms with ex ante higher bankruptcy costs, including those with higher intangibility, cash flow volatility, R&D expenses, and leverage, exhibit stronger effects. Firms with restricted access to capital are also affected more. A difference-in-differences analysis of firms’ debt structure responses to creditor rights reforms confirms the cross-country results. Our findings are robust to alternative settings and a battery of robustness checks.