Haekwon’s research interest is in empirical corporate finance. His current research focuses on corporate debt structure. His paper (with Kee Chung and Veljko Fotak) finds that firms rely more on private debt financing over public debt financing in competitive product markets because of high disclosure costs, despite private debt being relatively expensive due to bank’s rent extraction. Another paper (with Veljko Fotak, Feng Jiang, and Erik Lie) documents that while private debt lenders react strongly to the revelation of corporate misbehavior, lenders in public debt market do not, which results in unethical firms increasing their reliance on public debt. Haekwon is also interested in determinants of lending contract design. His paper (with Veljko Fotak and William Megginson) provides evidence that risk from weak property rights institutions have a significant impact on cross-border syndicated lending contracts while the risk can be mitigated by means of Bilateral Investment Treaties.
