During the 2008 financial crisis, general municipalities' across the United States began considering bankruptcy as a means for resolving systemic budget crises. This signified a substantial shift in the relationship between municipalities and Chapter 9 of the federal bankruptcy code. Until 2008, few general municipalities filed under Chapter 9. Special utility districts filed most Chapter 9 pet...

A much higher fraction of U.S. households would benefit financially from bankruptcy than actually file. While the current bankruptcy filing rate is about 1% of households each year, I calculate that at least 15% of households would benefit financially from filing and the actual figure would be several times higher if most households plan in advance for the possibility of filing. Two explanation...

A commonly held belief of game theorists is that the pre-nucleolus of the modest bankruptcy game is identical to the pre-nucleolus of its dual game, the greedy bankruptcy game. In this paper we provide some results that indicate that this belief is false. We establish some non-coincidence results of the pre-kernel and pre-nucleolus of the modest bankruptcy game with respect to the pre-kernel an...

We analyze the interaction of …rm product quality and pricing decisions with …nancial distress and bankruptcy in the airline industry. We consider an airline’s choice of quality and price as dynamic decisions that trade o¤ current cash ‡ows for future revenue. We examine how airline mishandled baggage, on-time performance and pricing are related to …nancial distress and bankruptcy, controlling ...

A link in production network is usually a creditordebtor relationship. If a firm goes into financial insolvency state or bankruptcy, then firms on its upstream can have secondary effect from the bankruptcy. By using the recent 10 years data of bankruptcy in japan, we show that these causes of “link effect” are by no means negligible. Indeed, nearly 20% of total debt (a few percent of GDP) is du...

Both bankruptcy regulation and redistributive taxation vary considerably across US states. We model the interactions between these two policies: redistributive taxation targets intratemporal inequality whereas asset exemptions in bankruptcy procedures help agents to smooth consumption across time. We derive sufficient conditions under which more redistributive taxation makes bankruptcy exemptio...

This paper examines whether giving large cash transfers to financially distressed people causes them to avoid bankruptcy. A comparison of Florida Lottery winners who randomly received $50,000 to $150,000 to small winners indicates that such transfers only postpone bankruptcy rather than prevent it, a result inconsistent with the negative shock model of bankruptcy. Furthermore, the large winners...

We construct a comprehensive dataset of patent sales conducted by all US public firms in Chapter 11 bankruptcy from 1981 to 2012. We document that 40% of firms sell, on average, 18% of their patents during bankruptcy reorganizations. Innovation sales concentrate in the first two quarters after bankruptcy filing. Firms sell more redeployable and liquid patents, as opposed to selling underexploit...

Over the last two decades, both bankruptcy and obesity rates in the U.S. have seen a steady rise. As obesity is one of the leading causes of medical and morbidity related economic costs, its influence on personal bankruptcy is analyzed in this study. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we employ a duration model to investigate the relative importance of obesity on the timing o...

Redistributive Taxation and Personal Bankruptcy in US States Both personal bankruptcy and redistributive taxes can insure households’ consumption risk and both vary considerably across US states. We derive sufficient conditions under which more redistributive taxation makes bankruptcy exemptions less attractive both for the intratemporal insurance and for inter-temporal consumption smoothing. E...