One may also wonder whether the inverted U effect is driven by a certain kind of financial covenant. In particular, the accounting literature distinguishes between performance or cash-flow-based covenants, such as covenants on coverage ratios or debt/EBITDA, and capital or balance sheet covenants, such as covenants on liquidity ratios or measures of net worth ( Christensen and Nikolaev, 2012; Demerjian, 2011 ). Following these authors’ definitions and examining performance and capital covenants in- dependently, I find that the inverted U effect is qualitatively similar for both types of financial covenants.