We provide evidence that financial shocks to lenders influence the composition of financial covenants in debt contracts. Using two distinct measures of lender-specific shocks—defaults in a lender's corporate loan portfolio that occur outside the borrower's region and industry, and non-corporate loan delinquencies—we show that lenders respond to financial shocks by increasing the number and strictness of performance-based but not of capital-based covenants in debt contracts. We examine two possible channels for this result. We find evidence consistent with lenders using stricter control rights because of concerns about capital depletion (a capital channel) and because of new information about lenders' own screening ability (a learning channel). Our results indicate that lender preferences influence how accounting information is used in debt contracts.

我们提供的证据表明，对贷方的金融冲击会影响债务合同中金融契约的构成。使用两种不同的针对贷方特定冲击的衡量标准——贷方公司贷款组合中发生在借款人所在地区和行业之外的违约以及非公司贷款拖欠——我们表明贷方通过增加业绩的数量和严格程度来应对金融冲击——债务合同中以资本为基础的契约。我们检查了此结果的两个可能渠道。我们发现证据表明贷方使用更严格的控制权，因为担心资本枯竭（资本渠道）和贷方自身筛选能力的新信息（学习渠道）。