Risk Hedging and Loan Covenants
研究美国油气生产商的贷款协议和衍生品头寸，发现贷款契约是对冲政策的重要决定因素，超过85%的样本贷款协议包含对冲契约，其中一半以上有明确的最低对冲要求。
We study lending agreements and derivative positions of U.S. oil and gas producers, showing that loan covenants are important determinants of hedging policies. Hedging covenants appear in more than 85% of sample loan agreements, with explicit minimum hedging requirements in more than half. Covenants are more common when expected default costs are larger. The well-documented positive relation between borrowing and hedging is largely attributable in our sample to binding covenants, as the relation is much weaker in their absence. These results suggest that understanding firms’ hedging choices requires the consideration of lender interests along with those of owners and managers. This paper was accepted by Lukas Schmid, finance. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.01616 .