Decomposing Fire Sale Discounts

The paper decomposes the raw fire sale discount into a quality component, a misallocation component, and  a  residual  liquidity  component.   We  find  that  distressed  airlines  under-maintain their  fleets  and,  this quality impairment explains half of the discount.  We find no evidence of misallocation to lower productivity users.  While the raw discounts are much larger for Chapter 7 than Chapter 11 transactions, the difference is largely explained by longer periods of under-maintenance and consequently lower quality of aircraft sold in Chapter 7.  The evidence suggests that the magnitude of welfare losses associated with fire sales are likely to be overstated.