In the last dozen years, economists have produced a considerable body of research suggesting that the historical origin of a country’s laws is highly correlated with a broad range of its legal rules and regulations, as well as with economic outcomes. Much of this research has dealt with rules...

Financially distressed and insolvent firms file for bankruptcy to either reorganize or liquidate under court supervision. Fundamentally, bankruptcy law is designed to resolve creditor coordination and holdout problems. It not only sets up rules and guidelines to allow firms to restructure their...

How do firms' efforts to prevent harm to third parties change as they approach, enter, and then exit bankruptcy? To help answer this, I investigate a panel of roughly 350 US firms, all of which declare bankruptcy and are regulated under the Clean Water Act (CWA) for pollutants they release into...

This article demonstrates that the Trust Indenture Act, a Depression-era statute governing bond indentures, cannot have been intended to prohibit debt restructurings like the one in Marblegate. In that decision, a federal court recently held that a debt restructuring violated the non-impairment...

Chrysler entered and exited bankruptcy in 42 days, making it one of the fastest major industrial bankruptcies in memory. It entered as a company widely thought to be ripe for liquidation if left on its own, obtained massive funding from the United States Treasury, and exited via a pseudo sale of...

The bankruptcy system plays an important role in resolving financial distress and reallocating resources in the economy. While many believe that transparency is central to an efficient bankruptcy system, the Bankruptcy Code lacks clear standards for disclosure and financial reporting. In this...

This study examines the association between real earnings management, governance attributes, and IPO failure risk. Using a sample of 4174 IPOs firms that went public over the period of 1998-2011, we find evidence that real earnings management and governance attributes are associated with IPO...