Access to Credit after Emerging from Corporate Bankruptcy

This paper identifies the credit restrictions that small firms are facing after emerging from bankruptcy. Using the French credit register, I implement a differencein-difference strategy that exploits staggered removal of bankruptcy flags in the form of an exogenous change in credit ratings. I focus on small and medium businesses between 2012 and 2019 and show that the flag removal leads to an increase in bank credit of 1.7%. The flag removal does not make relationship banks forget about the past bankruptcy. Instead, it removes adverse information for new banks that subsequently start lending. As a result, financially constrained firms rely less on supplier debt and increase their investment by 15%.