Snow and Leverage
利用奥地利高杠杆滑雪酒店债务重组样本，发现降低债务积压能显著改善运营绩效，并以意外降雪量作为杠杆变化的工具变量，区分流动性违约与策略性违约。
Using a sample of highly (over-)leveraged Austrian ski hotels undergoing debt \nrestructurings, we show that reducing a debt overhang leads to a significant improvement \nin operating performance (return on assets, net profit margin). In particular, \na reduction in leverage leads to a decrease in overhead costs, wages, and input costs, \nand to an increase in sales. Changes in leverage in the debt restructurings are instrumented \nwith Unexpected Snow, which captures the extent to which a ski hotel \nexperienced unusually good or bad snow conditions prior to the debt restructuring. \nEffectively, Unexpected Snow provides lending banks with the counterfactual \nof what would have been the ski hotel's operating performance in the absence of \nstrategic default, thus allowing to distinguish between ski hotels that are in distress \ndue to negative demand shocks ("liquidity defaulters") and ski hotels that are in \ndistress due to debt overhang ("strategic defaulters").