Stayin' alive: Debt complexity as a bankruptcy-delaying mechanism
研究发现，财务困境中的企业会主动增加债务复杂性，降低债权人预期回收率，从而延迟破产，这对理解企业破产决策和债权人行为有参考价值。
A complex and multi-layered liability structure with potentially overlapping claims on underlying collateral reduces expected recovery rates for creditors, which increases their incentives to keep otherwise insolvent firms afloat. Financially distressed firms may therefore seek to strategically “toxify” their capital structure to stave off future bankruptcy. In this article, we find evidence indicating that firms generate more debt complexity as they enter financial distress. Consistent with the idea that it operates as a bankruptcy-delaying mechanism, complexity reduces the probability of bankruptcy for any given level of financial distress.