This study estimates the firm-level employment effects of investment grants in Germany. In addition to the average treatment effect on the treated, we examine discrimination in the funding rules as potential source of effect heterogeneity. We combine a staggered difference-in-differences approach that explicitly models variations in treatment timing with a matching procedure at the cohort level. The findings reveal a positive effect of investment grants on employment development in the full sample. The subsample analysis yields strong evidence for heterogeneous effects based on firm characteristics and the economic environment. This can help to improve the future design of the program.

Different types of bankruptcy restructuring procedures are used in most legal systems to decide the fate of businesses facing financial hardship. We study how bargaining failures in an under-researched type of restructuring procedure, a formal out-of-the court procedure impacts the economic performance of participating firms. Croatia introduced a “pre-bankruptcy settlement” (PBS) process in the wake of the Great Recession of 2007–2009. A novel dataset provides us with annual financial statements for both sides of more than 180,000 debtor–creditor pairs, enabling us to address selection into failed negotiations by matching a rich set of creditor and debtor characteristics. Failures to settle at the PBS stage due to idiosyncratic bargaining problems, which effectively delay entry into the standard bankruptcy procedure, lead to a lower rate of survival among debtors as well as reduced employment, revenue, and profits. We are the first study to track how bargaining failures diffuse through the network of creditors, finding a significant negative effect on small creditors, but not others. Our results highlight the impact of delay and the importance of structuring bankruptcy procedures, to rapidly resolve uncertainty about firms’ future prospects.