Product Market Threats and Performance-Sensitive Debt

Abstract

This paper examines how product market threats shape the use of performance pricing in loan contracts. Loan contracting faces a trade-off between financial markets and product markets: while using contractual terms that are linked to borrower performance -- such as performance pricing -- mitigates borrower-creditor frictions in financial markets, it makes a borrower vulnerable to product market pressures, which often decline borrower performance and make performance pricing more likely to become binding. Supporting this trade-off, we find that product market threats significantly moderate the use of performance pricing in loan contracts, particularly when the benefit of doing so outweighs its cost in exacerbating borrower-creditor frictions in financial markets

Keywords: product market threats, financial markets, loan contracting, performance-sensitive debt, performance pricing

JEL Classification: G20, G21, G30, G32, L10, L20