For decades, personal bankruptcies increased in the U.S., either reflecting growing economic distress of families or a declining stigma associated with filing for bankruptcy. In a nod to the latter argument, the U.S. Congress passed the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Prevention Act of 2005 (BAPCPA), after bankruptcies had grown to record high rates. The assumption was that with the new law many if not most bankruptcies would eventually disappear since they supposedly were the result of a “bankruptcy of convenience”.  

The U.S. bankruptcy rate fell indeed sharply after the law went into effect, but increased quickly again afterwards. By the end of 2007, the U.S. bankruptcy rate exceeded all levels recorded during the 1980s, and approached the levels prevalent during the early 1990s. But it remains unclear how much of these changes resulted from BAPCPA and what was attributable to other factors.  

In this Working Paper, the authors establish a benchmark level of the U.S. bankruptcy rates after 2005 that likely would have been observed if the law had not changed. They then compare the actual U.S. bankruptcy rate to the benchmark for 2007 to provide a sense of the effectiveness of BAPCPA.

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Paper provided by Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst in its series Working Papers with number wp185.

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Date of creation: 2008
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1. Perron, Pierre, 1989. "The Great Crash, the Oil Price Shock, and the Unit Root Hypothesis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(6), pages 1361-1401, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
   Other versions:
   • Perron, P, 1988. "The Great Crash, The Oil Price Shock And The Unit Root Hypothesis," Papers 338, Princeton, Department of Economics - Econometric Research Program.
2. Fisher, Franklin M, 1970. "Tests of Equality Between Sets of Coefficients in Two Linear Regressions: An Expository Note," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 38(2), pages 361-66, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
3. Ashley, Richard, 1985. "On the Optimal Use of Suboptimal Forecasts of Explanatory Variables," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 3(2), pages 129-31, April.

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