To test our hypotheses, we require firms in our sample to have borrowed from the syndicated loan market within six
years before they issue public debt. We collect public debt information from the FISD database, and bank loan information
from the LPC database. We obtain detailed information on public debt agreements, including the covenants contained in
those agreements, from the FISD database over the period from June 1961 to February 2007. We focus on public debt
agreements entered into by U.S. corporations between January 1994 and February 2007 because our analyses require
detailed data on the provisions included in the firm’s bank loans and bank loan data on the LPC database is only available
over this period.