Empirical Research in Consumer Bankruptcy

Empirical research in bankruptcy has expanded rapidly in the past twenty years. The increase in scholars interested in the subject, the ease of obtaining relevant data from court files, and new technological developments have contributed to this expansion.However, the expansion of this research has not come without obstacles or criticism. Data collection methods remain difficult and plagued with inconsistency. Moreover, some relevant facts pertinent to the bankruptcy system cannot be gleaned through empirical methods. More fundamentally, critics claim that empirical evidence can never have an important impact on policy debates. This Article has multiple aims. It describes the current state of empirical research in consumer bankruptcy; it argues that empirical studies have had an important influence on specific issues in the debates leading to the 2005 amendments to the Bankruptcy Code; and it concludes by generalizing from the field of consumer bankruptcy to demonstrate the value of empirical methods in all legal research. It adds an appendix guide to recognizing a bogus study