Provision of Management Incentives in Bankrupt Firms

*We acknowledge the helpful comments of Barry Adler and Bernie Black (editors), Mingming Zhou (JLFA discussant), an anonymous referee, Taylor Begley, Jiang Cheng, Casey Cheng, Richard Craswell, Julian Franks, Wayne Guay, Sheng Huang, Mark Huson, Ravi Jagannathan, Wei Jiang, Woojin Kim, Ken Lehn, Frank Li, Angie Low, Adair Morse, Paul Oyer, Vikrant Vig, Jano Zabojnik, and Alminas Zaldokas. We also thank workshop participants at Australian School of Business, Concordia University, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Monash University, Nanyang Technological University, National Chengchi University, Queen’s University, Tsinghua University, University of Alberta, University of Hong Kong, and Yuan Ze University, and conference participants at the Asia-Pacific Journal of Financial Studies Conference, China International Conference in Finance, Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, Journal of Law, Finance, and Accounting International Conference, London Business School Summer Symposium, Northern Finance Association annual meetings, and NTU International Conference. We thank Wenhan Lin, Matt Murphy, Remya Neela, Mitch Shinbein, Zhihua (Vania) Shi, Nikhil Wadhwa, and Kevin Zhu for their excellent research assistance, and Lynn LoPucki, Parcels Inc., and various National Archives for their help with data collection. Vidhan Goyal thanks the Research Grants Council for financial support (RGC Project #641110). Wei Wang thanks the CPA Center for Governance at the Queen’s Smith School of Business for financial support.