The Role of Debt Covenants in Assessing the Economic Consequences of Limiting Capitalization of Exploration Costs.
直接分析1986年SEC强制要求油气公司冲销勘探成本后，24份贷款协议的实际影响，发现即使导致财务报表重大差异和部分技术性违约，也未产生可观察的经济后果，质疑了通过债务契约传导经济后果的假设。
Abstract ABSTRACT: Several studies have hypothesized that economic consequences of mandated accounting procedures arise through impacts on firms' accounting-based loan covenants. However, this research has involved very little direct examination of the loan contracts. This study directly examines how public and private loan agreements were affected by an accounting procedure mandated by the SEC. It analyzes 24 loan agreements of 18 oil and gas firms that, as a result of an SEC requirement announced on May 6, 1986, recorded writeoffs of exploration costs for the first quarter of 1986. The principal finding is that, even for a mandated accounting procedure that caused both large financial statement differences and some technical violations of loan covenants, there were no observable economic consequences for the affected firms. This result casts doubt on the Importance of economic consequences of other mandated accounting procedures that might operate through affects on debt covenants.