Exploiting the timing of the 2005-06 Italian bankruptcy law reforms, we disentangle the effects of reorganization and liquidation in bankruptcy on bank financing and firms' investment. A 2005 reform introduces procedures facilitating loan renegotiation. The 2006 reform subsequently strengthens creditor rights in liquidation. The first reform increases interest rates and reduces investment. The second reform reduces interest rates and spurs investment. Our results highlight the importance of identifying the distinct effects of liquidation and reorganization, as these procedures address differently the tension in bankruptcy law between the continuation of viable businesses and the preservation of repayment incentives.
Exploiting the timing of the 2005-06 Italian bankruptcy law reforms, we disentangle the effects of reorganization and liquidation in bankruptcy on bank financing and firms' investment. A 2005 reform introduces procedures facilitating loan renegotiation. The 2006 reform subsequently strengthens creditor rights in liquidation. The first reform increases interest rates and reduces investment. The second reform reduces interest rates and spurs investment. Our results highlight the importance of identifying the distinct effects of liquidation and reorganization, as these procedures address differently the tension in bankruptcy law between the continuation of viable businesses and the preservation of repayment incentives.
We empirically identify the lending standards applied by banks to small and medium firms over the cycle. We exploit an institutional feature of the Italian credit market that generates a sharp discontinuity in the allocation of comparable firms into credit risk categories. Using loan-level data, we show that during the expansionary phase of the cycle, banks relax lending standards by narrowing the interest rate spreads between substandard and performing firms. During the contractionary phase of the cycle, the abrupt tightening of lending standards leads to the exclusion of substandard firms from credit. These firms then report significantly lower production, investment, and employment. Finally, we find that the drying up of the interbank market is an important factor determining the change in bank lending standards.
Every year 400,000 entrepreneurs fail and 60,000 file for personal bankruptcy. The option to declare bankruptcy provides entrepreneurs with insurance against the financial consequences of business failures. However, it comes at the cost of worsened credit market conditions. In this paper, we construct a quantitative general equilibrium model of entrepreneurship to show that the presence of secured credit in addition to unsecured credit substantially alters the trade-off between insurance and credit conditions. A lenient bankruptcy law always worsens credit conditions, in particular for poor entrepreneurs. If secured credit is not available, their credit conditions are so bad that many prefer to become workers. In that case, we show that the optimal bankruptcy law is very harsh because the benefits from better credit conditions dominate the worsened insurance. However, if secured credit is available, entrepreneurs who might be rationed out of the unsecured credit market can still obtain secured credit. Therefore, they can run larger firms, which makes entrepreneurship more attractive. Since the presence of secured credit lowers the cost of a generous bankruptcy law, we find that the optimal law is lenient in this case: moving to the optimal bankruptcy law would increase entrepreneurship by more than four per cent.
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