This paper examines the effect of creditor protection on the choice of government procurement contract types. We use the staggered adoption of anti-recharacterization laws (ARLs) as a quasi-natural experiment to investigate the research question. ARLs strengthen creditors’ rights to repossess collateral in bankruptcy and thus enhance creditor protection. Using a dataset of U.S. government contracts, we find a significant shift from the use of fixed-price contracts to cost-plus contracts after the adoption of ARLs. The effect is more pronounced for firms with higher default risk and stronger firm-government ties. We also find that the government is more likely to switch away or reduce the contract value for contractors affected by ARLs. Overall, our findings point to an important relation between debt contracts and government contracts.

中文翻译：

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债权人保护和政府采购合同


本文研究了债权人保护对政府采购合同类型选择的影响。我们使用反重新定性定律 （ARL） 的交错采用作为准自然实验来研究研究问题。ARL 加强了债权人在破产中收回抵押物的权利，从而加强了对债权人的保护。使用美国政府合同数据集，我们发现在采用 ARL 后，从使用固定价格合同到成本加成合同发生了重大转变。对于违约风险较高且企业与政府关系较强的企业，这种影响更为明显。我们还发现，政府更有可能取消或降低受 ARL 影响的承包商的合同价值。总体而言，我们的研究结果表明债务合同和政府合同之间存在重要关系。