To evaluate which of these views dominates, we employ a large sample of 151,855 firm-year observations representing 17,452
unique firms from 48 countries over the 1991–2010 period. In regressions that control for a large set of country- and firm-specific
determinants as well as industry and year effects, we find that creditor rights have a significantly negative effect on the use of
long-term debt in our sample: on average, a one-unit increase in the creditor rights index of Djankov et al. (2007) is associated
with a decrease in the long-term debt ratio of approximately two percentage points, depending on the model specification. This
pattern persists when we examine the four components of the creditor rights index, when we employ alternative samples,
estimation methods, and proxies for leverage, and when we control for additional country-level factors. These findings support
the demand-side view on the relation between creditor rights and the use of debt.