Category: Bankruptcy Data

  • Who “Presides” over Chapter 13 Plan Confirmation Hearings?

    Posted by

    Melissa Jacoby

    Shutterstock_329900393Temple Law Review will soon publish a volume honoring Bill Whitford, based on a conference from last fall. That event was particularly special for an additional reason: it turned out to be the last opportunity, for many of us, to spend time with another inspiring leader in our field, Jean Braucher. 

    My own short contribution, on judicial oversight in chapter 13 bankruptcies, has just been posted here. We will share the word when the entire volume is available – including, I believe, a piece from Jean.

    Gavel image courtesy of Shutterstock

  • Municipal Bankruptcy After Detroit

    Posted by

    Melissa Jacoby

    ArrowsA new commentary stemming from my draft article Federalism Form and Function in the Detroit Bankruptcy is now posted on the Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog. The post frames the current skirmishes over other municipalities' access to chapter 9 at least in part as a referendum on the procedural tools used by the court to supervise the Detroit bankruptcy. For two prior Credit Slips posts on the article, see here and here.

    Arrow image courtesy of Shutterstock.com

  • Yep, 800,000 Bankruptcy Filings This Year

    Posted by

    Bob Lawless

    My blogging has been light the past few months as we have been working on the eighth edition of what will now be LoPucki, Warren & Lawless, Secured Transactions: A Systems Approach. For you secured transactions teachers out there, we have returned a first set of page proofs and everything looks on track for publication later this year well in advance of the spring semester.

    To get back into the blogging swing of things, I go to where else . . . bankruptcy filing data. Back in January, I predicted that total 2015 bankruptcy filings for the U.S. would be "somewhere around 800,000." Revisiting that prediction, the numbers seem right on track to meet it.

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  • Quantifying the Benefits of the Fresh Start

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    Jason Kilborn

    I recently discovered a not-so-new paper that provides a useful answer to a question I've asked before:  Who benefits from consumer bankruptcy, and to what degree? This is a real challenge for policy-making, and well-supported answers are essential to greasing the wheels of reform.

    In this paper, Will Dobbie (Princeton) and Jae Song (SSA) use a creative technique, comparing the financial outcomes of Chapter 13 debtors whose plans were–and were not–confirmed to probe the positive effects of access to such relief (apparently whether or not the payment plan is successfully completed). Successful access to Chapter 13 protection led to over $5000 in increased annual earnings in the first ten post-filing years and a 3.5 percentage-point increase in employment over the first five post-filing years, including a nearly 3 percentage-point increase in self employment. Access to relief also reduced the receipt of "welfare" benefits and increased retirement savings contributions.  Most striking, access to debt relief reduced mortality (presumably by decreasing stress) during this period by almost 2 percentage points–which is a 47.5% decrease from the mean for filers whose cases were dismissed, largely attributable to a large, positive effect on filers over 60. The authors attribute these gains to an increased incentive to work and produce earnings and  reduction in economic instability and stress.

    The results of this study are among the many individual and societal benefits of consumer bankruptcy commonly identified in legal literature. Indeed, the authors conclude that "individual debt relief is much more likely to be welfare-improving than previously realized"–and these instances of individual welfare redound in direct ways to the state and society as a whole. While I can see a variety of quibbles that empirical scholars might have with this study, the results provide fairly solid support for the most common working theories of relief, and they offer even greater comfort for policymakers searching for reasons to introduce or expand individual debt relief.

  • Bankruptcy Filings Down Again 10.1% in February 2015

    Posted by

    Bob Lawless

    2015 February.Year over Year ChangesThanks to Epiq Systems, the latest monthly bankruptcy figures are out, and they show a 10.1% year-over-year decline. We now have had 52 straight months of year-over-year declines in the U.S. bankruptcy filing rate. The graph to the right shows the trend in year-over-year changes.

    There was a daily average of 3,422 bankruptcy filings in February, compared to 3,804 from the previous year. Total February bankruptcy filings were just over 65,000. (Daily averages are computed based on business days.)

    I forecasted approximately 800,000 bankruptcy filings for the 2015 calendar year, and the first two months of the calendar year suggested we are spot on that forecast. The first few months of the calendar historically see the highest filing rates of the year. January and February usually account for about 15.5% of the annual total, and extrapolating that historical pattern to the 124,052 filings so far in 2015 puts us right at 800.000 for the calendar year.

    (For new readers, reasons for the decline are explained in many of my posts collected here.)

  • Sh*t In, Sh*t Out? the Problem of Mortgage Data Corruption & Empirical Analysis

    Posted by

    Adam Levitin

    Empirical economic analysis is a powerful tool. It can elucidate correlations and sometimes even get us to causual explanations. But it has a serious weak-spot:  its value is entirely dependent upon the integrity of the data analyzed. To put the problem succinctly: sh*t in, sh*t out.

    This brings us to analyses of the housing bubble. There’s a sizeable academic literature on the housing bubble (and relatedly also expert witness reports on loss causation in MBS litigation) that rely on loan-level data. The problem is that a lot of that loan-level data is suspect. That should hardly be a surprise: the industry even referred to some products as “liar loans”. And there were also FBI Mortgage Fraud reports indicating an uptick in mortgage fraud. But it was easy for economists to ignore the data integrity problem as long as the problems were merely anecdotal (e.g., the mariachi musician with the six-figure income), and could be blissfully assumed to only affect a small number of loans.

    No longer. It’s hard to show mortgage fraud empirically, but there’s a growing empirical literature about mortgage fraud. There are now a couple of academic studies demonstrating significant inflation of borrower income on loan applications (here and here and here and here and here). (To be clear, this does not mean that the income was inflated by the borrowers. It could be inflated by either borrowers or lenders, including loan brokers.) There’s also a Fitch Ratings report from late 2007 that shows questionable stated income, employment, FICO scores, property occupancy status, and appraisals on a large percentage of a small sample of subprime loans. 

    I want to emphasize that this literature does not undermine all empirical work on the housing market during the bubble years. But it should give us pause when considering any analysis that relies on either loan-level or pool-level loan characteristics such as income, DTI, FICO, occupancy status, and LTV/CLTV. I suspect that the empirical mortgage fraud literature will not deter many economists from plowing ahead whenever their data produces a regression with statistical significance. And the studies might well be right in the end. But it should tell the rest of us to consume the studies with a grain of salt.

  • Rethinking “Small” Business Bankruptcies

    Posted by

    Michelle Harner

    Shutterstock_228943780It may surprise some, but approximately 90% of all chapter 11 debtors have less than $10 million in assets or liabilities, less than $10 million in annual revenues, and 50 or fewer employees (see data on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the ABI Commission Report, here). These companies are the heart of chapter 11. Nevertheless, most of the media and caselaw coverage discusses only the megacases—e.g., Caesars, American Airlines, Tribune Company, etc.—representing approximately 2-3% of chapter 11 debtors. It is time to change the focus of the conversation.

    When a small business closes its doors, an entire community feels the impact. Consider the following description of the ripple effects of the closing of a small mine in Lincoln County, Montana:

    In addition to the workers and families directly impacted by the loss of jobs, the ripple effects of the loss of that income will impact local businesses at every level. Restaurants, stores and other shops depend upon local consumers to keep themselves afloat, the dollars that are paid to those employees find their way into the hands of a number of additional places, keeping a small local economy alive.  (Full story here.)

    Similar stories occur most everyday in towns across America (see, e.g., here).

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  • Have Retail Reorgs Gone the Way of the Dodo?

    Posted by

    Michelle Harner

    Shutterstock_157426502-3In the past two months, four retailers have filed bankruptcy cases. RadioShack is rumored to be preparing a chapter 11 filing, and other retailers certainly appear to be struggling (see Stephen Lubben’s post here). But if you were counseling any of these retailers, would you recommend a chapter 11 filing? Okay, put aside the professional fees you might earn—would filing really be in the best interests of your retail client? (For a discussion of fees and costs in chapter 11, see Part IV.A.8 of the ABI Commission Report.)

    Consider this: from 2006-2013, the number of retailers liquidating in chapter 11 increased significantly. Although no data are perfect, the various data we have on chapter 11 filings are quite telling. For example, according to the UCLA-LoPucki Bankruptcy Research database, during 2006-2013, 41.2% of large public retailers (excluding eating and drinking places) emerged from chapter 11 and 58.8% liquidated while, during 1980-2005, 60.5% of large public retailers emerged from chapter 11 and only 39.5% liquidated. Likewise, a quick look at the New Generations Public and Major Private Companies database suggests a similar trend for 2006-2013: approximately 62% of retail cases in the database ended in a liquidation (36 of 58). A chapter 11 filing has, quite literally, become a “bet the company” decision for retailers.

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  • Bankruptcies Down 12% in 2014, Forecast Predicts the Same Decline for 2015

    Posted by

    Bob Lawless

    2015 Projected Filings from JanuaryThe final count for 2014 U.S. bankruptcy filings is in, thanks to the data from the ever-helpful Epiq Systems. There was a total of 910,090 total bankruptcies in 2014, a decline of 11.8% from the previous year.

    In early June, my prediction was for 2014 bankruptcies to be "just over 900,000," a solid prediction but with half the data already in the books.

    My prediction for 2015 bankruptcies is somewhere around 800,000, which would be another decline of 12%. I arrived at that figure in two ways.

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  • Bankruptcy Filings Are Low, But Not Everywhere

    Posted by

    Bob Lawless

    Filings by Judicial District.Sept 2014Bankruptcy filings have dipped to their lowest rate since 1990, as previously blogged (ignoring anomalous statistical gyrations around the 2005 changes to the bankruptcy law). Over the past twelve months the bankruptcy filing rate per 1,000 persons has been 2.95, which is the first time it has been below 3.0 in almost 25 years. But, the filing rate is not that low everywhere.

    Before discussing how the filing rates are different across the country, the usual question I get is why the bankruptcy filing rate has declined so much. The answer to that question is not this post. Rather, see many previous posts like here and here. The short version is that U.S. households are carrying less debt — nothing more complicated than that. Along those lines see the post at Calculated Risk about the Fed's household debt service ratio being near record lows.

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