Labor protection and corporate Debt maturity: International evidence

This paper investigates the impact of labor protection on corporate debt maturity structure. We hypothesize that stronger labor protection is conducive to a greater use of short-term debt maturity by firms. Using various country-level indicators as measures of labor protection, and a sample of 114,594 firm-years from 43 countries over the 1990-2010 period, we document robust evidence that firms located in countries where labor enjoys a strong protection tend to borrow more short-term. Our analysis suggests that labor protection is an important institutional factor that plays a role in determining the maturity structure of corporate debt over-and-above economic, legal, and political factors identified in prior research.