About

Antonio E. Bernardo is the John E. Anderson Chair in Management at UCLA Anderson. His research spans various areas of corporate finance, with recent work focusing on bailouts, providing policy recommendations for lawmakers designing bailouts for distressed firms. His current research also explores optimal capital structures, specifically how decisions regarding capital structure are influenced by the debt choices of other firms within the industry. Bernardo has been teaching finance at UCLA Anderson for more than 20 years, contributing to the academic community through his expertise in corporate finance, economy, management, operations, and strategy.

Research topics

• Business
• Economics
• Microeconomics
• Finance
• Monetary economics

Selected publications

• Asset Redeployability, Liquidation Value, and Endogenous Capital Structure Heterogeneity

  Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis · 2019-08-22 · 8 citations

  article1st author

  Firms with lower leverage are not only less likely to experience financial distress but are also better positioned to acquire assets from other distressed firms. With endogenous asset sales and values, each firm’s debt choice then depends on the choices of its industry peers. With indivisible assets, otherwise-identical firms may adopt different debt policies, with some choosing highly levered operations (to take advantage of ongoing debt benefits) and others choosing more conservative policies to wait for acquisition opportunities. Our key empirical implication is that the acquisition channel can induce firms to reduce debt when assets become more redeployable.

  PublisherDOI

• Asset Redeployability, Liquidation Value, and Endogenous Capital Structure Heterogeneity

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2017-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Value of Financial Flexibility: Equilibrium Liquidation Values and Endogenous Capital Structure Heterogeneity

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2016-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Designing Corporate Bailouts

  The Journal of Law and Economics · 2016-02-01 · 7 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Although common economic wisdom suggests that government bailouts are inefficient because they reduce incentives to avoid failure and induce excessive entry by marginal firms, in practice bailouts are difficult to avoid for systemically significant enterprises. Recent experience suggests that bailouts also induce litigation from shareholders and managers complaining about expropriation and wrongful termination by the government. Our model shows how governments can design tax-financed corporate bailouts to reduce these distortions and points to the causes of inefficiencies in real-world implementations such as the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Bailouts with minimal distortion depend critically on the government’s ability to expropriate shareholders and terminate managers.

  PublisherDOI

• Earnings vs. stock-price based incentives in managerial compensation contracts

  Review of Accounting Studies · 2015-09-03 · 7 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Contracting Externalities and Mandatory Menus in the US Corporate Bankruptcy Code

  The Journal of Law Economics and Organization · 2015-12-09 · 7 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Our article offers the first justification for the US bankruptcy code, in which firms are not allowed to commit themselves ex ante in their lending agreements either to (Chapter 7) liquidation or to (Chapter 11) reorganization in case of distress ex post. If fire-sale liquidation imposes negative externalities on their peers, then firms can be collectively better off if they are all forced into a no-opt-out choice (a mandatory “menu”). This is the case even though they would individually want to commit themselves to liquidation, and it is collectively better for them than voluntary contract choice or mandatory liquidation. Our article’s innovation is thus to show not when a later choice should be prohibited, but when a later choice should be mandatory. Equivalent analyses could justify when other ex post choices should remain inalienable (not contractible). ( JEL G33, D62, K12)

  PublisherDOI

• Capital Structure with Endogenous Liquidation Values

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2014-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Contracting Externalities and Unrepudiable Menus in the U.S. Corporate Bankruptcy Code

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2013-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Designing Corporate Bailouts

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2013-01-01 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Leverage and preemptive selling of financial institutions

  Journal of Financial Intermediation · 2012-10-06 · 10 citations

  article1st author
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Frequent coauthors

• Ivo Welch

  107 shared

• Jiang Luo

  16 shared

• Eric L. Talley

  European Corporate Governance Institute

  11 shared

• Hongbin Cai

  Weichai Power (China)

  10 shared

• Alex Fabisiak

  7 shared

• Bhagwan Chowdhry

  Indian School of Business

  3 shared

• Olivier Ledoit

  2 shared

• Bradford Cornell

  2 shared