IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/irlaec/v48y2016icp50-58.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Tax claims, government priority, absolute priority and the resolution of financial distress

Author

Listed:
  • Fisher, Timothy C.G.
  • Martel, Jocelyn
  • Gavious, Ilanit

Abstract

We present a model of an insolvent firm that may take advantage of a ‘soft-touch’ government creditor in order to buy time before filing for reorganization, behaviour we refer to as ‘claims substitution.’ Parameters in the model reflect the enforcement of absolute priority and government priority in bankruptcy. We show that deviations from absolute priority reduce the incentive for claims substitution. We also show that strict government priority is economically efficient. We discuss the implications of our findings for bankruptcy law reform, especially with respect to the priority of tax claims in bankruptcy and the enforcement of absolute priority.

Suggested Citation

  • Fisher, Timothy C.G. & Martel, Jocelyn & Gavious, Ilanit, 2016. "Tax claims, government priority, absolute priority and the resolution of financial distress," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 50-58.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:irlaec:v:48:y:2016:i:c:p:50-58
    DOI: 10.1016/j.irle.2016.08.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0144818816300540
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.irle.2016.08.003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lucian Arye Bebchuk, 2002. "Ex Ante Costs of Violating Absolute Priority in Bankruptcy," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(1), pages 445-460, February.
    2. 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, June.
    3. Bart Leyman, 2012. "The uneasy case for rehabilitating small firms under the 1997-reorganization law in Belgium: evidence from reorganization plans," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 34(3), pages 533-560, December.
    4. Acharya, Viral V. & Amihud, Yakov & Litov, Lubomir, 2011. "Creditor rights and corporate risk-taking," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(1), pages 150-166, October.
    5. Fisher, Timothy C G & Martel, Jocelyn, 1995. "The Creditors' Financial Reorganization Decision: New Evidence from Canadian Data," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 11(1), pages 112-126, April.
    6. David Skeel, "undated". "Creditors' Ball: The 'New' New Corporate Governance in Chapter 11," Scholarship at Penn Law upenn_wps-1032, University of Pennsylvania Law School.
    7. Povel, Paul, 1999. "Optimal "Soft" or "Tough" Bankruptcy Procedures," Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 15(3), pages 659-684, October.
    8. Schwartz, Alan, 1997. "Contracting about Bankruptcy," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 13(1), pages 127-146, April.
    9. Timothy C.G. Fisher & Jocelyn Martel, 2004. "Empirical Estimates of Filtering Failure in Court‐Supervised Reorganization," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 1(1), pages 143-164, March.
    10. White, Michelle J, 1994. "Corporate Bankruptcy as a Filtering Device: Chapter 11 Reorganizations and Out-of-Court Debt Restructurings," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 10(2), pages 268-295, October.
    11. Timothy C.G. Fisher & Jocelyn Martel, 2015. "Too much of a good thing? The impact of a new bankruptcy law in Canada," Finance, Presses universitaires de Grenoble, vol. 36(2), pages 37-66.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Robert Dinterman & Ani L. Katchova, 2021. "Survival analysis of farm bankruptcy filings: Evaluating the time to completion of chapter 12 bankruptcy cases," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(2), pages 324-347, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Michelle J. White, 2005. "Economic Analysis of Corporate and Personal Bankruptcy Law," NBER Working Papers 11536, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. B. Leyman & K. Schoors & P. Coussement, 2008. "The Role of Firm Viability, Creditor Behavior and Judicial Discretion in the Failure of Distressed Firms under Courtsupervised Restructuring: Evidence from Belgium," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 08/509, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    3. Bart Leyman, 2012. "The uneasy case for rehabilitating small firms under the 1997-reorganization law in Belgium: evidence from reorganization plans," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 34(3), pages 533-560, December.
    4. Acharya, Viral V. & Sundaram, Rangarajan K. & John, Kose, 2011. "Cross-country variations in capital structures: The role of bankruptcy codes," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 25-54, January.
    5. Antill, Samuel, 2022. "Do the right firms survive bankruptcy?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(2), pages 523-546.
    6. Leyman, Bart & Schoors, Koen J.L. & Coussement, Peter, 2011. "Does court-supervised reorganization work? Evidence from post-confirmation firm failure," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 149-168, September.
    7. Martin Dòzsa & Karel Janda, 2015. "Corporate asset pricing models and debt contracts," CAMA Working Papers 2015-33, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    8. Tarantino, Emanuele, 2013. "Bankruptcy law and corporate investment decisions," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(7), pages 2490-2500.
    9. 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(2), pages 381-419.
    10. Xavier Giné & Inessa Love, 2010. "Do Reorganization Costs Matter for Efficiency? Evidence from a Bankruptcy Reform in Colombia," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 53(4), pages 833-864.
    11. Annabi, Amira & Breton, Michèle & François, Pascal, 2021. "Could Chapter 11 redeem itself? Wealth and welfare effects of the redemption option," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    12. B. Leyman & K. Schoors & P. Coussement, 2008. "Court-supervised Restructuring: Pre-bankruptcy Dynamics, Debt Structure and Debt Rescheduling," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 08/507, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    13. Régis Blazy & Nicolae Stef, 2020. "Bankruptcy procedures in the post-transition economies," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 7-64, August.
    14. Marinč, Matej & Rant, Vasja, 2014. "A cross-country analysis of bank bankruptcy regimes," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 13(C), pages 134-150.
    15. Carmen Vargas Pérez & Juan Luis Peñaloza Figueroa, 2017. "Big Data and the Demand for Court and Legal Services," European Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies Articles, Revistia Research and Publishing, vol. 3, September.
    16. Blazy, Régis & Esquerré, Stéphane, 2021. "The CV effect: To what extent does the chance to reorganize depend on a bankruptcy judge’s profile?," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    17. Gilles Recasens, 2003. "Faut-il adopter un système pro-créanciers de défaillances? Une revue de la littérature," Revue Finance Contrôle Stratégie, revues.org, vol. 6(1), pages 119-153, March.
    18. Arturo Bris & Alan Schwartz & Ivo Welch, 2005. "Who Should Pay for Bankruptcy Costs?," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(2), pages 295-341, June.
    19. Dewaelheyns, Nico & Van Hulle, Cynthia, 2009. "Filtering speed in a Continental European reorganization procedure," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 375-387, December.
    20. Jocelyn Martel, 1996. "Solutions au stress financier : Un survol de la littérature," CIRANO Working Papers 96s-03, CIRANO.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Tax claims; Government priority; Absolute priority; Financial distress;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G33 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Bankruptcy; Liquidation
    • G38 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • K22 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Business and Securities Law

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:irlaec:v:48:y:2016:i:c:p:50-58. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/irle .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.