A book review of a history of bankruptcy in the United States told through an interdisciplinary lens of law, history … and economics. The main contribution of this book is to evaluate changes in federal bankruptcy rates and bankruptcy law in … relation to state collections law. Bankruptcy in America is is the first book to consistently construct and evaluate state …

"In Bankrupt in America, Mary and Brad Hansen show that examination of how Americans have used bankruptcy law and the … history of the law itself offers important perspective on the history of bankruptcy in America. Using new statistical and … documentary evidence, they illustrate the cycles of interaction between bankruptcy law's use and its own evolution. The authors …

This paper studies the role of credit market competition in explaining consumer bankruptcy filings. I exploit variation … in bank competition induced by large bank mergers to establish that personal bankruptcy rates are significantly higher in …