Do Borrowers Intentionally Avoid Covenant Violations? A Reexamination of the Debt Covenant Hypothesis
复制并扩展Dichev和Skinner（2002）关于债务契约假说的研究，发现其结论在2000-2019年间仍然稳健，但最常见的财务契约（债务与EBITDA比率）不支持该假说。
ABSTRACT In this study, we replicate and extend the Dichev and Skinner [DS: 2002] study on the debt covenant hypothesis (DCH). We start by replicating DS and find results consistent with theirs. We then extend their work by changing three aspects of the research design: histogram bin width, calculation of slack, and statistical test of discontinuity. We find that the inference from DS is generally robust to varying these choices, although sensitive to different bin widths, during their sample period. We extend our analysis to the period 2000–2019 and find that support for DCH remains robust. We do, however, find a lack of support for DCH when examining the most common financial covenant, debt‐to‐EBITDA. These findings suggest a more nuanced perspective on DCH, whereby different types of financial covenants provide different incentives and abilities to avoid technical default.