in common with the Bankruptcy Code. This is easy to overlook because the legislation uses a language and employs a … decision-maker (both borrowed from bank regulation) that will seem foreign to bankruptcy lawyers. Our task in this essay is to …

This essay summarizes four papers: “Bargaining Around Bankruptcy: Small Business Distress and State Law,” 38 Journal of … Legal Studies 255 (2009); “Bankruptcy's Rarity: An Essay on Small Business Bankruptcy in the United States,” 5 European … Company & Financial Law Review 172 (2008); “Small Business Bankruptcy and the Bankruptcy Abuse and Consumer Protection Act of …

This paper assesses the importance of adverse health shocks as triggers of bankruptcy filings. We view car crashes as a … bankruptcy case files. We report two findings: (i) there is a strong positive correlation between an individual's pre … accounting for this simultaneity, we are unable to identify a causal effect of health shocks on bankruptcy filing rates. These …

We analyze a sample of large privately and publicly held businesses that filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy petitions during … bankruptcy filing, and few reorganization plans (at most 12 percent) deviate from the absolute priority rule to distribute value … loans extended to firms in bankruptcy. Unsecured creditors gain leverage through objections and other court motions. We also …

Policymakers have minimized the role of bankruptcy law in mitigating the financial fallout from COVID-19. Scholars too … are unsure about the merits of bankruptcy, especially Chapter 11, in resolving business distress. We argue that Chapter 11 …, however, bankruptcy should serve as a backstop to other policies, such as the CARES Act. Consumer bankruptcy law's primary …

. In this paper, we undertake a detailed examination of bankruptcy court opinions involving valuation disputes. Our paper …

African American bankruptcy filers are more likely to select Chapter 13 than other debtors, who opt instead for Chapter … 7, which has higher success rates and lower attorney fees. Prior scholarship blames racial discrimination by bankruptcy … bankruptcy reflect racial disparities in commuting …

We develop a model of a firm in financial distress. Distress can be mitigated by filing for bankruptcy, which is costly …, or preempted by restructuring, which is impeded by a collective action problem. We find that bankruptcy and restructuring … are complements, not substitutes: Reducing bankruptcy costs facilitates restructuring, rather than crowding it out. And so …

This essay surveys important contributions to the economics of bankruptcy. It is an introductory chapter for a …