As a preliminary illustration of the potential importance of creditor protection in shaping corporate leverage decisions, Fig. 1
plots the median long-term debt ratio for five groups of countries classified by creditor rights scores (0 to 4). The graph shows
that the use of long-term debt tends to decrease as creditor rights increase. For example, the median long-term debt ratio is
approximately 12.10% for the group of countries with the weakest creditor protection (i.e., Creditor Rights = 0), while it is only
6.03% for the group of countries with the strongest creditor protection (i.e., Creditor Rights = 4).