In line with Simunic (1980) and Larcker and Richardson (2004), we use the ratios of accounts receivable to
total assets (Recint) and inventory to total assets (Invint) at the fiscal year-end to proxy for a company’s asset
risk. We also use a dummy variable (Loss) to indicate whether a company has suffered a loss in the most recent
3 years. This variable takes the value of 1 if a loss occurs, and 0 otherwise. We expect the coefficients of all
three variables to be positive.