In U.S. data, income interruptions, the receipt of public insurance, and the incidence of personal bankruptcy are all … closely related. The central contribution of this paper is to evaluate both bankruptcy protection and public insurance in a … delivers two striking conclusions. First, we find that U.S. personal bankruptcy law is an important barrier to allowing the …

Because of the recent surge in U.S. personal defaults, Congress is currently debating bankruptcy reform legislation … previous work, bankruptcy options and production are explicitly taken into account. Our findings indicate that means testing … would not improve upon current bankruptcy provisions and, at best, leaves aggregate filings, output, and welfare unchanged …

significant effect on the bankruptcy rate. Additionally, a drop in information costs generates changes in other variables (e …