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Ex Ante Costs of Violating Absolute Priority in Bankruptcy

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  • Lucian Arye Bebchuk

Abstract

A basic question for the design of bankruptcy law concerns whether value should be divided in accordance with absolute priority. Research done in the past decade has suggested that deviations from absolute priority have beneficial ex ante effects. In contrast, this paper shows that ex post deviations from absolute priority also have negative effects on ex ante decisions taken by shareholders. Such deviations aggravate the moral hazard problem with respect to project choice - increasing the equityholders' incentive to favor risky projects - as well as with respect to borrowing and dividend decisions.

Suggested Citation

  • Lucian Arye Bebchuk, 2001. "Ex Ante Costs of Violating Absolute Priority in Bankruptcy," NBER Working Papers 8388, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8388
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    Cited by:

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    2. Galai, Dan & Raviv, Alon & Wiener, Zvi, 2007. "Liquidation triggers and the valuation of equity and debt," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(12), pages 3604-3620, December.
    3. Viral V. Acharya & Krishnamurthy V. Subramanian, 2009. "Bankruptcy Codes and Innovation," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(12), pages 4949-4988, December.
    4. Alexander Dilger, 2006. "Forced to make mistakes: Reasons for complaining about Bebchuk's scheme and other market-oriented insolvency procedures," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 79-94, January.
    5. R. Fischer & C. Bonilla, 2004. "Endogenous Credit Constraints and Factor Market Rigidities: the case of Bankruptcy," Econometric Society 2004 Latin American Meetings 240, Econometric Society.
    6. Ondøej Knot & Ondøej Vychodil, 2006. "Czech Bankruptcy Procedures: Ex-post Efficiency View," Working Papers IES 2006/03, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, revised Jan 2006.
    7. Michelle J. White, 2005. "Economic Analysis of Corporate and Personal Bankruptcy Law," NBER Working Papers 11536, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Bharath, Sreedhar T. & Panchapegesan, Venky & Werner, Ingrid, 2007. "The Changing Nature of Chapter 11," Working Paper Series 2008-4, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.
    9. Acharya, Viral V. & Sundaram, Rangarajan K. & John, Kose, 2011. "Cross-country variations in capital structures: The role of bankruptcy codes," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 25-54, January.
    10. Buttwill, Klas & Wihlborg, Clas, 2005. "The Efficiency of the Bankruptcy Process. An International Comparison," Ratio Working Papers 65, The Ratio Institute.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G33 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Bankruptcy; Liquidation
    • K20 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - General

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