We examine the causal effect of stakeholder orientation on firms’ cost of debt. Our test exploits the staggered state-level adoption of constituency statutes, which allows directors to consider stakeholders’ interests when making business decisions. We find a significant drop in loan spreads for firms incorporated in states that adopted such statutes relative to firms incorporated elsewhere. We further show that constituency statutes reduce the cost of debt through the channels of mitigating conflicts of interest between residual and fixed claimants and between holders of liquid claims and holders of illiquid claims, limiting legal liability and lowering takeover threats.

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利益相关者导向和债务成本：来自州级通过选区法规的证据

我们研究了利益相关者导向对公司债务成本的因果影响。我们的测试利用了州一级对选区法规的交错采用，这允许董事在做出业务决策时考虑利益相关者的利益。我们发现，相对于在其他地方成立的公司，在采用此类法规的州注册的公司的贷款利差显着下降。我们进一步表明，选区法规通过减轻剩余债权人和固定债权人之间以及流动债权持有人和非流动债权持有人之间的利益冲突、限制法律责任和降低收购威胁的渠道来降低债务成本。