Although U.S. bankruptcy ling rates are at an all-time high, I argue in this paper that many more households would benet nancially from ling for bankruptcy than actually le. While the current bankruptcy ling rate is slightly above one percent of households each year, I calculate that at least...

This article rst examines the economic justication for having a personal bankruptcy procedure at all. I argue that it is economically worthwhile to have a bankruptcy pro- cedure, but that costs rise more quickly than benets as the exemption level increases.

This paper investigates the Bayesian decision-theoretic foundations of the Wall Street adage that `timing is everything'. One might think that a `small' risk-neutral trader wishes to act immediately upon any private information he possesses. I begin with a counterintuitive nding that trade...

In this paper, we model and estimate the effects of both bankruptcy stigma and financial benefit on household's decisions to file for bankruptcy. We show that the probability of debtors ling for bankruptcy rises when the level of bankruptcy stigma falls. We also show that the level of bankruptcy...