The present paper explores the link between bankruptcy law and firms' dynamics, focusing on Italy as a case study. Relying on a previous literature dealing with the concept of entrepreneurship “friendly” bankruptcy law, we stress the idea that bankruptcy institutions, although connected to a...

This paper investigates the consequences of liquidation and reorganization on the allocation and subsequent utilization of assets in bankruptcy. Using the random assignment of judges to bankruptcy cases as a natural experiment that forces some firms into liquidation, we find that the long-run...

We present a model of an insolvent firm that may take advantage of a "soft-touch" government creditor in order to buy time before filing for reorganization, behavior we refer to as "claims substitution." Parameters in the model reflect the enforcement of absolute priority and government priority...

The Dodd-Frank Act tasks regulators with defining a Qualified Residential Mortgage (QRM) as an exemption from risk retention for residential mortgage-backed securities. Congress instructs regulators to consider factors that result in lower levels of historic default in defining a QRM. We analyze...

In 2002, a legal reform introduced in India allowed secured creditors to seize and liquidate the defaulter's assets. We study firms' choice between capital and labor in response to these strengthened creditor rights by exploiting variation in their pre-policy proportion of collateralizable...

We examine how creditor protection affects firms with different levels of owners' and managers' personal costs of bankruptcy. Theoretically, we show that firms with high personal costs of bankruptcy borrow and invest more under a more debtor-friendly management stay system, whereas firms with...

The US bankruptcy code provides enhanced priority and security features to debtor-in-possession (DIP) loans which can be obtained from a lender with whom the borrower may have no past lending relationship. The enhanced priority of DIP financing, and the choice of a DIP lender, significantly...

This Essay, which will appear in Across the Great Divide: New Perspectives on the Financial Crisis, a Brookings Institution and Hoover Institution book, begins with a brief overview of concerns raised by the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy about the adequacy of our existing architecture for resolving...

Exploiting the timing of the 2005-06 Italian bankruptcy law reforms, we disentangle the effects of reorganization and liquidation in bankruptcy on bank financing and firms' investment. A 2005 reform introduces procedures facilitating loan renegotiation. The 2006 reform subsequently strengthens...