This paper provides new evidence on how cultural norms affect contract design in international transactions. By using a comprehensive dataset on Yankee bonds, we find that bond contracts include more covenants when the issuer comes from a country with a lower level of trust. This substitution effect between trust and contractual detail holds after controlling for a variety of controls in country, firm and security level. The findings suggest that foreign firms can write sophisticated contracts that overcome the shortage of trust and facilitate the access to global capital markets.

中文翻译：

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信守和使用盟约

本文为文化规范如何影响国际交易中的合同设计提供了新的证据。通过使用洋基债券的综合数据集，我们发现，当发行人来自信任度较低的国家时，债券合同包含更多的契约。在对国家，公司和安全级别的各种控制进行控制之后，信任和合同细节之间的这种替代效果仍然有效。调查结果表明，外国公司可以签定复杂的合同，以克服信任不足的问题，并有助于进入全球资本市场。