This study analyzes whether corporate financing policies of the US industrial firms have depended on borrowing costs during the last forty years. The results show that the impact is either zero or slightly negative. Even in the latter case, the results are economically insignificant. Overall, our findings suggest that firms do not adjust their capital structures based on interest rates, except when market participants expect that real gross domestic product growth will be negative. Using a dynamic partial equilibrium model, we show that relatively high leverage adjustment costs are able to explain the weak negative relation between interest rates and a firm's leverage. Our results are also consistent with the view that firms target debt-to-asset ratio rather than debt level.

This paper examines how credit risk spillovers affect corporate financial flexibility. We construct separate empirical proxies to disentangle the two channels of credit risk spillovers—credit risk contagion (CRC), where one firm's default increases the distress likelihood of another; and product market rivalry (PMR), where the same default strengthens the position of a competitor. We show that firms facing greater CRC have weaker subsequent operating performance and must contend with less favorable bank loan terms. Meanwhile, they accumulate more cash by issuing equity, selling assets, and reducing investment and payout. In contrast, PMR generally has opposite, albeit weaker, effects. Our findings suggest that credit risk spillovers, especially CRC, play an important role in corporate liquidity management.