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Cited by 1,433

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 12 of the 12 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Optimal Debt Structure and the Number of Creditors

Bolton, Patrick, Scharfstein, David S.·1996·Journal of Political Economy
DOI 10.1086/262015
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Abstract

Within an optimal contracting framework, we analyze the optimal number of creditors a company borrows from. We also analyze the optimal allocation of security interests among creditors and intercreditor voting rules that govern renegotiation of debt contracts. The key to our analysis is the idea that these aspects of the debt structure affect the outcome of debt renegotiation following a default. Debt structures that lead to inefficient renegotiation are beneficial in that they deter default, but they are also costly if default is beyond a manager's control. The optimal debt structure balances these effects. We characterize how the optimal debt structure depends on firm characteristics such as its technology, its credit rating, and the market for its assets.

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Metadata

Authors
Bolton, P., & Scharfstein, D. S.
Venue
Journal of Political Economy
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Published
1996-02
Volume
104
Issue
1
Pages
1-25
ISSN
  • 0022-3808 (ISSN-L)
  • 1537-534X
DOI
10.1086/262015
OpenAlex
W1992868825
Cited by
1,433
References
12
FWCI
95.61
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Optimal Debt Structure and the Number of Creditors. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1086/262015
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Bolton, P., & Scharfstein, D. S. (1996). Optimal Debt Structure and the Number of Creditors. Journal of Political Economy. https://doi.org/10.1086/262015

Data sources

Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.