I investigate the effect of assets' liquidation values on capital structure by exploiting the diversity of track gauges in nineteenth-century American railroads. The abundance of track gauges limited the redeployability of rolling stock and tracks to potential users with similar track gauge. Moreover, potential demand for both rolling stock and tracks was further diminished when many railroads went under equity receiverships. I find that the potential demand for a railroad's rolling stock and tracks were significant determinants of debt maturity and the amount of debt that was issued by railroads. The results are consistent with liquidation values models of financial contracting and capital structure. The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: [email protected], Oxford University Press.

[I investigate the effect of assets' liquidation values on capital structure by exploiting the diversity of track gauges in nineteenth-century American railroads. The abundance of track gauges limited the redeployability of rolling stock and tracks to potential users with similar track gauge. Moreover, potential demand for both rolling stock and tracks was further diminished when many railroads went under equity receiverships. I find that the potential demand for a railroad's rolling stock and tracks were significant determinants of debt maturity and the amount of debt that was issued by railroads. The results are consistent with liquidation values models of financial contracting and capital structure]

Financial market imperfections can have significant impact on employment decisions of firms. We illustrate the economic importance of this channel by showing that employment decisions are constrained by firms’ financial health and liquidity. Our main analysis uses a collage of three “quasi-experiments” to trace the effects of finance on employment. The results suggest that financial constraints and the availability of credit play an important role in firm-level employment decisions, as well as aggregate unemployment outcomes.

We provide novel evidence linking the level of creditor protection provided by law to the degree of usage of technologically older, vintage capital in the airline industry. Using a panel of aircraft-level data around the world, we find that better creditor rights are associated with both aircraft of a younger vintage and newer technology, as well as firms with larger aircraft fleets. We propose that by mitigating financial shortfalls, enhanced legal protection of creditors facilitates the ability of firms to make large capital investments, adapt advanced technologies, and foster productivity.

We examine how collateral affects the cost of debt capital. Using a novel data set of secured debt issued by U.S. airlines, we construct industry-specific measures of collateral redeployability. We show that debt tranches that are secured by more redeployable collateral exhibit lower credit spreads, higher credit ratings, and higher loan-to-value ratios—an effect which our estimates show to be economically sizeable. Our results suggest that the ability to pledge collateral, and in particular redeployable collateral, lowers the cost of external financing and increases debt capacity.

How do liquidation values affect financial contract renegotiation? While the “incomplete-contracting” theory of financial contracting predicts that liquidation values determine the allocation of bargaining power between creditors and debtors, there is little empirical evidence on financial contract renegotiations and the role asset values play in such bargaining. This paper attempts to fill this gap. We develop an incomplete-contracting model of financial contract renegotiation and estimate it using data on the airline industry in the United States. We find that airlines successfully renegotiate their lease obligations downward when their financial position is sufficiently poor and when the liquidation value of their fieet is low. Our results show that strategic renegotiation is common in the airline industry. Moreover, the results emphasize the importance of the incomplete contracting perspective to real-world financial contract renegotiation.

We analyze how firms renegotiate labor contracts to extract concessions from labor. While anecdotal evidence suggests that firms tend to renegotiate wages downward in times of financial distress, there is no empirical evidence that documents such renegotiation, its determinants, and its magnitude. This article attempts to fill this gap. Using a unique data set of airlines, which includes detailed information on wages and pension plans, we document an empirical link between airline financial distress, pension underfunding, and wage concessions.

This paper studies the limitations of monetary policy in stimulating credit and investment. We show that, under certain circumstances, unconventional monetary policies fail in that liquidity injections into the banking sector are hoarded and not lent out. We use the term “credit traps” to describe such situations and show how they can arise due to the interplay between financing frictions, liquidity, and collateral values. We show that small contractions in monetary policy can lead to a collapse in lending. Our analysis demonstrates how quantitative easing may be useful in increasing collateral prices, bank lending, and aggregate investment.

In this paper, we investigate whether securitization was associated with risky lending in the corporate loan market by examining the performance of individual loans held by collateralized loan obligations. We employ two different data sets that identify loan holdings for a large set of CLOs and find that adverse selection problems in corporate loan securitizations are less severe than commonly believed. Using a battery of performance tests, we find that loans securitized before 2005 performed no worse than comparable unsecuritized loans originated by the same bank. Even loans originated by the bank that acts as the CLO underwriter do not show under-performance relative to the rest of the CLO portfolio. While some evidence exists of under-performance for securitized loans originated between 2005 and 2007, it is not consistent across samples, performance measures, and horizons. Overall, we argue that the securitization of corporate loans is fundamentally different from securitization of other assets classes because securitized loans are fractions of syndicated loans. Therefore, mechanisms used to align incentives in a lending syndicate are likely to reduce adverse selection in the choice of CLO collateral.

Do bankrupt firms impose negative externalities on their nonbankrupt competitors? We propose and analyze a collateral channel in which a firm's bankruptcy reduces the collateral value of other industry participants, thereby increasing their cost of debt financing. We identify the collateral channel using novel data of secured debt tranches issued by U.S. airlines that include detailed descriptions of the underlying collateral pools. Our estimates suggest that industry bankruptcies have a sizeable impact on the cost of debt financing of other industry participants. We discuss how the collateral channel may lead to contagion effects that amplify the business cycle during industry downturns.