The disciplinary effects of non-debt liabilities: Evidence from asbestos litigation

Jérôme P. Taillard

Journal of Corporate Finance, 2013, vol. 23, issue C, 267-293

Abstract: I study firms with past asbestos ties that suffer from significant increases in legal liabilities after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1999. This event provides a natural experiment setting to estimate the indirect effects of financial distress on real activities. While direct litigation and bankruptcy costs are significant, value computations and clinical evidence at the operational level show that defendant firms suffer only minor indirect costs of financial distress. Furthermore, these firms actively restructure and refocus on core operations during distress. Overall, my results provide support for potentially significant disciplinary effects of non-debt liabilities.

Keywords: Asbestos; Litigation; Natural experiment; Financial distress; Bankruptcy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G32 G33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0929119913000795
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:corfin:v:23:y:2013:i:c:p:267-293

DOI: 10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2013.08.005

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Corporate Finance is currently edited by A. Poulsen and J. Netter

More articles in Journal of Corporate Finance from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().