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Bankruptcy and Small Firms' Access to Credit

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Author Info
Jeremy Berkowitz
Michelle J. White
Abstract

In this paper, we investigate how personal bankruptcy law affects small firms' access to credit. When a firm is unincorporated, its debts are personal liabilities of the firm's owner, so that lending to the firm is legally equivalent to lending to its owner. If the firm fails, the owner has an incentive to file for personal bankruptcy, since the firm's debts will be discharged and the owner is only obliged to use assets above an exemption level to repay creditors. The higher the exemption level, the greater is the incentive to file for bankruptcy. We show that supply of credit falls and demand for credit rises when non-corporate firms are located in states with higher bankruptcy exemptions. We test the model and find that, if small firms are located in states with unlimited rather than low homestead exemptions, they are more likely to be denied credit, they receive smaller loans and interest rates are higher. Results for non-corporate versus corporate firms suggest that lenders often disregard small firms' organizational status in making loan decisions.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 9010.

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Date of creation: Jun 2002
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9010

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K2 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law
E5 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit

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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.:
  1. Cole, Rebel A., 1998. "The importance of relationships to the availability of credit," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(6-8), pages 959-977, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Gropp, Reint & Scholz, John Karl & White, Michelle J, 1997. "Personal Bankruptcy and Credit Supply and Demand," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 112(1), pages 217-51, February.
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  3. Gordon, Roger H. & MacKie-Mason, Jeffrey K., 1994. "Tax distortions to the choice of organizational form," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 279-306, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  4. Lin, Emily Y. & White, Michelle J., 2001. "Bankruptcy and the Market for Mortgage and Home Improvement Loans," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 138-162, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Hynes, Richard M & Malani, Anup & Posner, Eric A, 2004. "The Political Economy of Property Exemption Laws," Journal of Law & Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 47(1), pages 19-43, April.
  6. Petersen, Mitchell A & Rajan, Raghuram G, 1995. "The Effect of Credit Market Competition on Lending Relationships," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 110(2), pages 407-43, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  7. Rebel A. Cole & Lawrence G. Goldberg & Lawrence J. White, 1997. "Cookie-Cutter versus Character: The Micro Structure of Small Business Lending by Large and Small Banks," New York University, Leonard N. Stern School Finance Department Working Paper Seires 98-022, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business-.
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  8. Moulton, Brent R., 1986. "Random group effects and the precision of regression estimates," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 385-397, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Ken Cavalluzzo & Linda Cavalluzzo & John Wolken, 1999. "Competition, small business financing, and discrimination: evidence from a new survey," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 1999-25, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
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  10. Berger, Allen N & Udell, Gregory F, 1995. "Relationship Lending and Lines of Credit in Small Firm Finance," Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 68(3), pages 351-81, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. Longhofer, Stanley D., 1997. "Absolute Priority Rule Violations, Credit Rationing, and Efficiency," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 249-267, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  12. Berkowitz, Jeremy & Hynes, Richard, 1999. "Bankruptcy Exemptions and the Market for Mortgage Loans," Journal of Law & Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 42(2), pages 809-30, October.
  13. Petersen, Mitchell A & Rajan, Raghuram G, 1994. " The Benefits of Lending Relationships: Evidence from Small Business Data," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(1), pages 3-37, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  14. Stiglitz, Joseph E & Weiss, Andrew, 1981. "Credit Rationing in Markets with Imperfect Information," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 393-410, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  15. Bester, Helmut, 1994. "The Role of Collateral in a Model of Debt Renegotiation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 26(1), pages 72-86, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  16. Petersen, Mitchell A & Rajan, Raghuram G, 1997. "Trade Credit: Theories and Evidence," Review of Financial Studies, Oxford University Press for Society for Financial Studies, vol. 10(3), pages 661-91.
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  17. Hart, O. & Moore, J., 1989. "Default And Renegotiation: A Dynamic Model Of Debt," Working papers 520, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
    Other versions:
  18. Stanley D. Longhofer, 1997. "Absolute priority rule violations, credit rationing, and efficiency," Working Paper 9710, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. [Downloadable!]
  19. White, M.J., 1998. "Why Don't More Households File for Bankruptcy?," Papers 98-03, Michigan - Center for Research on Economic & Social Theory.
  20. White, Michelle J, 1998. "Why Don't More Households File for Bankruptcy?," Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 14(2), pages 205-31, October.
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(explanations, 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.)

  1. Andrei Shleifer, 2003. "Will the Sovereign Debt Market Survive?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(2), pages 85-90, May. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  2. Wei Fan & Michelle J. White, 2002. "Personal Bankruptcy and the Level of Entrepreneurial Activity," NBER Working Papers 9340, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Loayza, Norman V. & Oviedo, Ana Maria & Serven, Luis, 2005. "Regulation and macroeconomic performance," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3469, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
  4. Bhattacharya, J. & Chankraborty, S., 2003. "What do information frictions do?," Discussion Paper 21, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  5. Dilip Mookherjee, 2005. "Decentralization, Hierarchies and Incentives: A Mechanism Design Perspective," Boston University - Department of Economics - Working Papers Series WP2005-034, Boston University - Department of Economics, revised Sep 2005. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  6. von Lilienfeld-Toal, Ulf & Mookherjee, Dilip, 2006. "Bankruptcy law, bonded labor and inequality," Proceedings of the German Development Economics Conference, Berlin 2006 18, Verein für Socialpolitik, Research Committee Development Economics. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  7. Fajnzylber, Pablo & Maloney, William F. & Rojas, Gabriel V. Montes, 2006. "Releasing constraints to growth or pushing on a string ? the impact of credit, training, business associations, and taxes on the performance of Mexican micro-firms," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3807, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
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