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Banking and Finance Law

Faculty Publications

Bankruptcy Law

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Articles 1 - 5 of 5

Full-Text Articles in Law

Credit Markets, Exemptions, And Households With Nothing To Exempt, Richard M. Hynes Jan 2006

Credit Markets, Exemptions, And Households With Nothing To Exempt, Richard M. Hynes

Faculty Publications

American bankruptcy law has offered a "fresh start" in every state for over one hundred years. As a result, econometric studies of consumer bankruptcy often focus on one of the few aspects of the law that has varied significantly across time and across states: exemptions. Professors Gropp, Scholz and White published the first article to test the effect of exemptions on credit markets. Consistent with theory, they found that residents of states with larger exemptions pay higher interest rates than those in states with lower exemptions andface an increased probability that they will be denied credit. These effects were most …


Why (Consumer) Bankruptcy?, Richard M. Hynes Oct 2004

Why (Consumer) Bankruptcy?, Richard M. Hynes

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.


Overoptimism And Overborrowing, Richard M. Hynes Jan 2004

Overoptimism And Overborrowing, Richard M. Hynes

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.


Optimal Bankruptcy In A Non-Optimal World, Richard M. Hynes Jan 2002

Optimal Bankruptcy In A Non-Optimal World, Richard M. Hynes

Faculty Publications

Consumer bankruptcy insures individuals against misfortune. Like other forms of insurance, bankruptcy reduces an individual's incentive to guard against misfortune and provides her with an incentive to overstate her need for relief. The "first-best," or optimal, bankruptcy system, like the first-best tax or public assistance system, solves these moral hazards without any loss of efficiency. In bankruptcy, this first-best approach would deny relief to debtors responsible for their own distress and reduce the deserving debtors' obligations to an amount commensurate with their ability to pay. While the Bankruptcy Code tries (in part) to follow this first-best approach, such a utopian …


To Love, Honor, And (Oh) Pay: Should Spouses Be Forced To Pay Each Other's Debts?, A. Mechele Dickerson Jan 1998

To Love, Honor, And (Oh) Pay: Should Spouses Be Forced To Pay Each Other's Debts?, A. Mechele Dickerson

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.