The role of creditor rights on capital structure and product market interactions: International evidence

Sadok El Ghoul, Omrane Guedhami (), Chuck C Y Kwok () and Ying Zheng ()
Additional contact information
Omrane Guedhami: University of South Carolina
Chuck C Y Kwok: University of South Carolina
Ying Zheng: Bryant University

Journal of International Business Studies, 2021, vol. 52, issue 1, No 8, 147 pages

Abstract: Abstract An extensive body of international business research examines how cross-country variations in legal institutions influence corporate finance practices. Building on this literature, as well as the literature on capital structure and product market interactions, we investigate the effect of an important dimension of legal institutions – creditor rights – on the product market performance of highly leveraged firms. Using a sample of 37,422 firms from 60 countries over the 1989–2016 period, we find that strong creditor protection benefits less leveraged firms, but adversely affects highly leveraged firms by increasing the adverse responses of customers, competitors, and employees. The adverse effect of creditor rights on the costs of high leverage is more pronounced for firms in countries with developed debt markets and banking systems, but mostly insignificant for firms in countries with developed equity markets and low information asymmetry. Our study offers new insights into the international business literature and contributes to the debate on the role of creditor protection by uncovering a potential cost based on capital structure and product market interactions.

Keywords: creditor rights; capital structure; product market performance; financial systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41267-020-00309-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:jintbs:v:52:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1057_s41267-020-00309-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... nt/journal/41267/PS2

DOI: 10.1057/s41267-020-00309-x

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of International Business Studies is currently edited by John Cantwell

More articles in Journal of International Business Studies from Palgrave Macmillan, Academy of International Business
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().