详情
Regulatory Shocks as Revealing Devices: Evidence from Smoking Bans and Corporate Bonds
I study whether workplace smoking bans change how bond investors assess firm risk. Using staggered state adoption across U.S.\ states from 2002 to 2012 and a heterogeneity-robust difference-in-differences design, I find that smoking bans increase six-month cumulative abnormal bond returns by about 90 basis points. The average effect is only the starting point: the response is much larger for speculative-grade issuers and firms with low interest coverage, indicating that investors reprice the policy where downside operating risk matters most for debt values. Mechanism tests point most clearly to improved operating performance and lower worker turnover, while broader financial-constraint, liquidity, and duration channels remain close to zero. Alternative estimators, placebo diagnostics, and geographic spillover checks all support the interpretation that workplace smoking bans trigger targeted credit-risk reassessment rather than a generic regional shock. My findings connect public-health regulation to capital-market outcomes and show how non-financial policy shocks can reveal economically meaningful information about corporate credit risk.