Losing Control? The Two‐Decade Decline in Loan Covenant Violations
研究发现1997至2019年间美国上市公司财务契约违约比例下降约70%，主要源于贷款方为减少无关紧要的违约而放弃早期发现困境借款人的意愿增强，部分归因于借款人结构变化和2010年代投资者情绪高涨。
ABSTRACT The annual proportion of U.S. public firms that reported a financial covenant violation fell roughly 70% between 1997 and 2019. To understand this trend, we develop an estimable model of covenant design that depends on the ability to differentiate between distressed and nondistressed borrowers and the relative costs associated with screening incorrectly. We find that the drop in violations is best explained by an increased willingness to forgo early detection of distressed borrowers in exchange for fewer inconsequential violations, which we attribute largely to a shift in the composition of public borrowers and partly to heightened investor sentiment during the 2010s.