IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this paper

Do reorganization costs matter for efficiency ? Evidence from a bankruptcy reform in Colombia

Author Info

Listed author(s):
  • Gine, Xavier
  • Love, Inessa

Abstract

The authors study the effect of reorganization costs on the efficiency of bankruptcy laws. They develop a simple model that predicts that in a regime with high costs, the law fails to achieve the efficient outcome of liquidating unviable businesses and reorganizing viable ones. The authors test the model using the Colombian bankruptcy reform of 1999. Using data from 1,924 firms filing for bankruptcy between 1996 and 2003, they find that the pre-reform reorganization proceeding was so inefficient that it failed to separate economically viable firms from inefficient ones. In contrast, by substantially lowering reorganization costs, the reform improved the selection of viable firms into reorganization. In this sense, the new law increased the efficiency of the bankruptcy system in Colombia.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2006/07/20/000016406_20060720170008/Rendered/PDF/wps3970.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Paper provided by The World Bank in its series Policy Research Working Paper Series with number 3970.

as
in new window

Length:
Date of creation: 01 Jul 2006
Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3970
Contact details of provider: Postal:
1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433

Phone: (202) 477-1234
Web page: http://www.worldbank.org/
Email:


More information through EDIRC

Keywords: Banks&Banking Reform; Corporate Law; Small Scale Enterprise; Microfinance; Economic Theory&Research;

Other versions of this item:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

as
in new window


  1. Philippe Aghion & Oliver D. Hart & John Moore, 1994. "The Economics of Bankruptcy Reform," NBER Chapters,in: The Transition in Eastern Europe, Volume 2: Restructuring, pages 215-244 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  2. Hotchkiss, Edith Shwalb, 1995. " Postbankruptcy Performance and Management Turnover," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(1), pages 3-21, March.
  3. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1992. " Liquidation Values and Debt Capacity: A Market Equilibrium Approach," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(4), pages 1343-1366, September.
  4. Simeon Djankov & Oliver Hart & Caralee McLiesh & Andrei Shleifer, 2008. "Debt Enforcement around the World," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 116(6), pages 1105-1149, December.
  5. Arturo Bris & Ivo Welch & Ning Zhu, 2006. "The Costs of Bankruptcy: Chapter 7 Liquidation versus Chapter 11 Reorganization," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(3), pages 1253-1303, 06.
  6. Per Strömberg, 2000. "Conflicts of Interest and Market Illiquidity in Bankruptcy Auctions: Theory and Tests," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(6), pages 2641-2692, December.
  7. White, Michelle J, 1994. "Corporate Bankruptcy as a Filtering Device: Chapter 11 Reorganizations and Out-of-Court Debt Restructurings," Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 10(2), pages 268-295, October.
  8. Love, Inessa & Preve, Lorenzo A. & Sarria-Allende, Virginia, 2007. "Trade credit and bank credit: Evidence from recent financial crises," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(2), pages 453-469, February.
  9. Schwartz, Alan, 1997. "Contracting about Bankruptcy," Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 13(1), pages 127-146, April.
  10. Matthias Kahl, 2002. "Economic Distress, Financial Distress, and Dynamic Liquidation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(1), pages 135-168, 02.
  11. Alderson, Michael J. & Betker, Brian L., 1995. "Liquidation costs and capital structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 45-69, September.
  12. Gertner, Robert & Scharfstein, David, 1991. " A Theory of Workouts and the Effects of Reorganization Law," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(4), pages 1189-1222, September.
  13. White, Michelle J, 1989. "The Corporate Bankruptcy Decision," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 3(2), pages 129-151, Spring.
  14. Oliver Hart, 2006. "Different approaches to bankruptcy," ifo DICE Report, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 4(1), pages 3-8, 04.
  15. Edward I. Altman, 1968. "Financial Ratios, Discriminant Analysis And The Prediction Of Corporate Bankruptcy," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 23(4), pages 589-609, 09.
  16. Baird, Douglas G & Picker, Randal C, 1991. "A Simple Noncooperative Bargaining Model of Corporate Reorganizations," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 20(2), pages 311-349, June.
  17. Thorburn, Karin S., 2000. "Bankruptcy auctions: costs, debt recovery, and firm survival," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 337-368, December.
  18. Edward R. Morrison, 2007. "Bankruptcy Decision Making: An Empirical Study of Continuation Bias in Small-Business Bankruptcies," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 50, pages 381-419.
  19. Franks, Julian R & Torous, Walter N, 1989. " An Empirical Investigation of U.S. Firms in Reorganization," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 44(3), pages 747-769, July.
  20. Weiss, Lawrence A., 1990. "Bankruptcy resolution: Direct costs and violation of priority of claims," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 285-314, October.
  21. Vojislav Maksimovic & Gordon Phillips, 1998. "Asset Efficiency and Reallocation Decisions of Bankrupt Firms," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 53(5), pages 1495-1532, October.
  22. Julian R. Franks & Walter N. Torous, 1989. "An Empirical Investigation of U.S. Firms in Reorganization," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 44(3), pages 747-769, 07.
  23. Paul R. Milgrom, 1981. "Good News and Bad News: Representation Theorems and Applications," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 12(2), pages 380-391, Autumn.
  24. Franks, Julian R & Lóránth, Gyöngyi, 2005. "A Study of Inefficient Going Concerns in Bankruptcy," CEPR Discussion Papers 5035, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  25. Benjamin S. Wilner, 2000. "The Exploitation of Relationships in Financial Distress: The Case of Trade Credit," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(1), pages 153-178, 02.
  26. Adolfo Rouillon, 2006. "Colombia : Creditor Rights and Insolvency Proceedings," World Bank Other Operational Studies 8184, The World Bank.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.

as
in new window


Cited by:

  1. Kerr, William R. & Nanda, Ramana, 2009. "Democratizing entry: Banking deregulations, financing constraints, and entrepreneurship," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1), pages 124-149, October.
  2. International Finance Corporation & World Bank, 2009. "Doing Business 2010 : Reforming through Difficult Times - Comparing Regulation in 183 Economies," World Bank Publications, The World Bank, number 2562, August.
  3. David McKenzie, 2010. "Impact Assessments in Finance and Private Sector Development: What Have We Learned and What Should We Learn?," World Bank Research Observer, World Bank Group, vol. 25(2), pages 209-233, August.
  4. Erkki Laitinen, 2011. "Assessing viability of Finnish reorganization and bankruptcy firms," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 31(2), pages 167-198, April.
  5. Cadot, Olivier & Fernandes, Ana M. & Gourdon, Julien & Mattoo, Aaditya, 2011. "Impact evaluation of trade interventions : paving the way," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5877, The World Bank.

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3970. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Roula I. Yazigi)

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.