provided great research assistance. Benmelech is grateful for financial support from the National Science Foundation under CAREER award SES-0847392. All errors are our own. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peerreviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

No abstract

We thank Eric Kim for research assistance, Bert Grider at the TRFSRDC for helping with data and clearance requests, and Evan Buntrock at the NYFSRDC (Cornell) for administrative assistance. Any opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Census Bureau. All results have been reviewed to ensure that no confidential information is disclosed. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

We examine the impact of asset liquidation value on debt contracting using a unique set of commercial property non-recourse loan contracts. We employ commercial zoning regulation to capture the flexibility of a property's permitted uses as a measure of an asset's redeployability or value in its next best use. Within a census tract, more redeployable assets receive larger loans with longer maturities and durations, lower interest rates, and fewer creditors, controlling for the current value of the property, its type, and neighborhood. These results are consistent with incomplete contracting and transaction cost theories of liquidation value and financial structure.