Purchase obligations are forward contracts with suppliers and are used more broadly than traded commodity derivatives. This paper is the first to document that these contracts are a risk management tool and have a material impact on corporate hedging activity. Firms that expand their risk management options following the introduction of steel futures contracts substitute financial hedging for purchase obligations. Contracting frictions, such as bargaining power and settlement risk, as well as potential hold-up issues associated with relationship-specific investment, affect the use of purchase obligations in the cross-section, as well as how firms respond to the introduction of steel futures.

Purchase obligations are forward contracts with suppliers and are used more broadly than traded commodity derivatives. This paper is the first to document that these contracts are a risk management tool and have a material impact on corporate hedging activity. Firms that expand their risk management options following the introduction of steel futures contracts substitute financial hedging for purchase obligations. Contracting frictions, such as bargaining power and settlement risk, as well as potential hold-up issues associated with relationship-specific investment, affect the use of purchase obligations in the cross-section, as well as how firms respond to the introduction of steel futures. Received May 31, 2016; editorial decision March 17, 2017 by Editor David Denis.

ABSTRACT We show that sovereign debt impairments can have a significant effect on financial markets and real economies through a credit ratings channel. Specifically, we find that firms reduce their investment and reliance on credit markets due to a rising cost of debt capital following a sovereign rating downgrade. We identify these effects by exploiting exogenous variation in corporate ratings due to rating agencies' sovereign ceiling policies, which require that firms' ratings remain at or below the sovereign rating of their country of domicile.