IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/revfec/v39y2021i3p280-289.html

Financial distress and the cost of labor: Evidence from a natural experiment

Author

Listed:
  • David J. Pedersen

Abstract

Employees bear significant costs in bankruptcy. Theoretical models predict they will accept lower wages in the face of financial distress to avoid such costs. Using a natural experiment, I test this theory and find an exogenous increase in default risk causes a decrease in employee wages. The effect is economically meaningful: the reduction in aggregate annual wages equals 10% of the firm's earnings and 33% of its interest expense. As expected, it is concentrated in financially vulnerable firms and those with fewer agency conflicts. Employees thus represent an important financial resource for firms in the midst of financial distress.

Suggested Citation

  • David J. Pedersen, 2021. "Financial distress and the cost of labor: Evidence from a natural experiment," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 39(3), pages 280-289, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:revfec:v:39:y:2021:i:3:p:280-289
    DOI: 10.1002/rfe.1105
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/rfe.1105
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/rfe.1105?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Henrik Cronqvist & Fredrik Heyman & Mattias Nilsson & Helena Svaleryd & Jonas Vlachos, 2009. "Do Entrenched Managers Pay Their Workers More?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(1), pages 309-339, February.
    2. John R. Graham & Hyunseob Kim & Si Li & Jiaping Qiu, 2023. "Employee Costs of Corporate Bankruptcy," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 78(4), pages 2087-2137, August.
    3. Antonio Falato & Nellie Liang, 2016. "Do Creditor Rights Increase Employment Risk? Evidence from Loan Covenants," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 71(6), pages 2545-2590, December.
    4. Bae, Kee-Hong & Kang, Jun-Koo & Wang, Jin, 2011. "Employee treatment and firm leverage: A test of the stakeholder theory of capital structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(1), pages 130-153, April.
    5. Perotti, Enrico C & Spier, Kathryn E, 1993. "Capital Structure as a Bargaining Tool: The Role of Leverage in Contract Renegotiation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1131-1141, December.
    6. Jonathan B. Berk & Richard Stanton & Josef Zechner, 2010. "Human Capital, Bankruptcy, and Capital Structure," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(3), pages 891-926, June.
    7. Chemmanur, Thomas J. & Cheng, Yingmei & Zhang, Tianming, 2013. "Human capital, capital structure, and employee pay: An empirical analysis," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(2), pages 478-502.
    8. Gormley, Todd A. & Matsa, David A. & Milbourn, Todd, 2013. "CEO compensation and corporate risk: Evidence from a natural experiment," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 79-101.
    9. Efraim Benmelech & Nittai K. Bergman & Ricardo J. Enriquez, 2012. "Negotiating with Labor under Financial Distress," The Review of Corporate Finance Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 1(1), pages 28-67.
    10. Chemmanur, Thomas J. & Kong, Lei & Krishnan, Karthik & Yu, Qianqian, 2019. "Top Management Human Capital, Inventor Mobility, and Corporate Innovation," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 54(6), pages 2383-2422, December.
    11. Todd A. Gormley & David A. Matsa, 2011. "Growing Out of Trouble? Corporate Responses to Liability Risk," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(8), pages 2781-2821.
    12. Ryan Michaels & T Beau Page & Toni M Whited, 2019. "Labor and Capital Dynamics under Financing Frictions," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 23(2), pages 279-323.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. David C. Mauer, 2021. "Introduction to the special issue on labor and corporate finance," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 39(3), pages 229-231, July.
    2. Amol Baxi & V. Raveendra Saradhi, 2026. "Distinct Dimensions of Human Capital in Distressed Firms: Implications for Firms and Research," Vikalpa: The Journal for Decision Makers, , vol. 51(1), pages 7-24, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pagano, Marco, 2020. "Risk Sharing Within the Firm: A Primer," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 12(2), pages 117-198, October.
    2. Will Gornall & Oleg R. Gredil & Sabrina T. Howell & Xing Liu & Jason Sockin, 2025. "Do Employees Cheer for Private Equity? The Heterogeneous Effects of Buyouts on Job Quality," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 71(5), pages 4287-4317, May.
    3. Gill, Balbinder Singh & Choi, Jongmoo Jay & John, Kose, 2024. "Firm leverage and employee pay: The moderating role of CEO leadership style," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 95(PA).
    4. Ellul, Andrew & Pagano, Marco, 2019. "Corporate leverage and employees’ rights in bankruptcy," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(3), pages 685-707.
    5. David A. Matsa, 2018. "Capital Structure and a Firm’s Workforce," NBER Working Papers 25125, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Karpuz, Ahmet & Luo, Di & Xiao, Rongbing & Zhao, Huainan, 2023. "The effect of labour protection laws on the relationship between leverage and wages," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    7. Di Giuli, Alberta & Matta, Rafael & Romec, Arthur, 2023. "Capital structure and reversible bargaining tools: Evidence from union-sponsored shareholder proposals," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    8. Avenancio-León, Carlos F. & Piccolo, Alessio & Pinto, Roberto, 2025. "Resilience in collective bargaining," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    9. Brockman, Paul & Luo, Juan & Xu, Limin, 2020. "The impact of short-selling pressure on corporate employee relations," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    10. John R. Graham & Hyunseob Kim & Si Li & Jiaping Qiu, 2023. "Employee Costs of Corporate Bankruptcy," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 78(4), pages 2087-2137, August.
    11. Vladimirov, Vladimir, 2021. "Financing Skilled Labor," CEPR Discussion Papers 15751, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    12. Nico Dewaelheyns & Cynthia Van Hulle & Yannick Van Landuyt & Mathias Verreydt, 2021. "Labor Contracts, Wages and SME Failure," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(14), pages 1-15, July.
    13. Jie (Jack) He & Tao Shu & Huan Yang, 2018. "The Employee Clientele of Corporate Leverage: Evidence from Personal Labor Income Diversification," Working Papers 18-01, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    14. Duygun, Meryem & Huang, Bihong & Qian, Xiaolin & Tam, Lewis H.K., 2018. "Corporate pension plans and investment choices: Bargaining or conforming?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 519-537.
    15. Ellul, Andrew & WANG, Cong & Zhang, Kuo, 2016. "Labor Unemployment Risk and CEO Incentive Compensation," CEPR Discussion Papers 11634, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    16. Schmalz, Martin, 2018. "Unionization, Cash, and Leverage," CEPR Discussion Papers 12595, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    17. Timothy E. Dore & Rebecca Zarutskie, 2017. "Firm Leverage, Labor Market Size, and Employee Pay," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2017-078, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    18. Ryan Michaels & T Beau Page & Toni M Whited, 2019. "Labor and Capital Dynamics under Financing Frictions," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 23(2), pages 279-323.
    19. Lin, Chen & Schmid, Thomas & Xuan, Yuhai, 2018. "Employee representation and financial leverage," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(2), pages 303-324.
    20. Akyol, Ali C. & Verwijmeren, Patrick, 2013. "Human capital costs, firm leverage, and unemployment rates," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 464-481.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:revfec:v:39:y:2021:i:3:p:280-289. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1002/(ISSN)1873-5924 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.