State Contract Law and Debt Contracts

An interesting paper by Colleen Honigsberg, Sharon Katz (both at Columbia) and Gil Sadka (Univ. of Texas at Dallas) in the November 2014 issue of the Journal of Law & Economics (available here) looks at differences in debt contract terms based on the state’s contract law which governs the debt contract. A number of papers have studied factors affecting the use of various types of covenants and contract terms for debt agreements, but none previously have accounted for variation in state contract laws. Below is the abstract:

This paper examines the relationship between debt contracts and state contract law. We first develop an index to evaluate whether each state’s law is favorable or unfavorable to lenders. We then analyze how the contract terms, the frequency of covenant violations, and the repercussions of covenant violations vary across states. We find that cash collateral is most likely to be used when the contract is governed by law that is favorable to debtors and that out-of-state borrowers who use favorable law pay higher yield spreads. In addition, when the law is favorable to lenders, there are significantly fewer covenant violations, and the repercussions of covenant violations—measured as changes in the borrower’s investment policy—are more severe. We also compare the characteristics of relevant parties across states, and the results provide support for the theory that there is a market for contracts similar to the market for incorporations.