IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jcopol/v39y2016i1p41-62.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bankrupt Households and Economic Crisis. Evidence from the Greek Courts

Author

Listed:
  • E. Marsellou
  • Y. Bassiakos

Abstract

This paper investigates the profile of the Greek bankrupt households and is the first to deal with the bankrupt households in Greece utilizing court data from the judicial decisions according to the newly established personal Bankruptcy Law 3869/2010. We compare the characteristics of the bankrupt households drawn from the court data with those of a control group of households without financial difficulties constructed from the EU-SILC database. Our findings indicate that income and/or job loss, family breakup, and women with children are important characteristics related to bankruptcy. We also find that although the median of the household disposable income of the bankrupt households is lower than that of the households without financial difficulties, the former do not fall below the poverty line at a greater rate than the latter, in all household size instances. This finding is in line with the results of earlier studies indicating that bankruptcy is not a poor household’s issue. The results are confirmed using logistic regression relating the probability of bankruptcy to a set of socioeconomic measures. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016

Suggested Citation

  • E. Marsellou & Y. Bassiakos, 2016. "Bankrupt Households and Economic Crisis. Evidence from the Greek Courts," Journal of Consumer Policy, Springer, vol. 39(1), pages 41-62, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jcopol:v:39:y:2016:i:1:p:41-62
    DOI: 10.1007/s10603-015-9309-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10603-015-9309-1
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10603-015-9309-1?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 look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gianni Betti & Neil Dourmashkin & Mariacristina Rossi & Ya Ping Yin, 2007. "Consumer over‐indebtedness in the EU: measurement and characteristics," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 34(2), pages 136-156, May.
    2. Kearns, Allan, 2003. "Mortgage Arrears in the 1990s: Lessons for Today," Quarterly Bulletin Articles, Central Bank of Ireland, pages 97-113, October.
    3. Cynamon Barry Z. & Fazzari Steven M., 2008. "Household Debt in the Consumer Age: Source of Growth--Risk of Collapse," Capitalism and Society, De Gruyter, vol. 3(2), pages 1-32, October.
    4. Theodore M. Mitrakos & Georgios Th Simigiannis & Panagiota G. Tzamourani, 2005. "Indebtedness of Greek households: evidence from a survey," Economic Bulletin, Bank of Greece, issue 25, pages 13-35, AUgust.
    5. Scott Fay & Erik Hurst & Michelle J. White, 2002. "The Household Bankruptcy Decision," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(3), pages 706-718, June.
    6. Theodoros M. Mitrakos & George T. Simigiannis, 2009. "The determinants of Greek household indebtedness and financial stress," Economic Bulletin, Bank of Greece, issue 32, pages 7-26, May.
    7. C. Lopes & C. Frade, 2012. "The Way into Bankruptcy: Market Anomie and Sacrifice Among Portuguese Consumers," Journal of Consumer Policy, Springer, vol. 35(4), pages 477-496, December.
    8. Sarah Bridges & Richard Disney, 2004. "Use of credit and arrears on debt among low-income families in the United Kingdom," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 25(1), pages 1-25, March.
    9. George T. Simigiannis & Panagiota G. Tzamourani, 2007. "Borrowing and socio-economic characteristics of households: results of sample surveys carried out by the Bank of Greece," Economic Bulletin, Bank of Greece, issue 28, pages 31-50, February.
    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. Cesar Leandro, Julio & Botelho, Delane, 2022. "Consumer over-indebtedness: A review and future research agenda," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 535-551.

    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. Du Caju, Philip & Rycx, François & Tojerow, Ilan, 2016. "Unemployment risk and over-indebtedness," Working Paper Series 1908, European Central Bank.
    2. Heather D Gibson & Georgia Pavlou, 2017. "Exporting and performance:evidence from Greek firms," Economic Bulletin, Bank of Greece, issue 45, pages 7-30, July.
    3. Costas N. Kanellopoulos, 2015. "The effects of minimum wages on wages and employment," Economic Bulletin, Bank of Greece, issue 41, pages 7-29, July.
    4. Nikos Vettas & Ioannis Giotopoulos & Evangelia Valavanioti & Svetoslav Danchev, 2016. "The determinants of new firms’ export performance," Economic Bulletin, Bank of Greece, issue 43, pages 7-17, July.
    5. Christos Papazoglou & Dimitrios Sideris & Orestis Tsagklas, 2016. "Europe as an optimum currency area: the experience of the Baltic countries," Economic Bulletin, Bank of Greece, issue 44, pages 35-46, December.
    6. Konstantina Manou & Evangelia Papapetrou, 2016. "The economic behaviour of households in Greece: recent developments and prospects," Economic Bulletin, Bank of Greece, issue 44, pages 7-33, December.
    7. Philip Du Caju & François Rycx & Ilan Tojerow, 2015. "Unemployment Risk and Over-indebtedness A Micro-econometric Perspective," Working Papers CEB 15-046, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    8. Sofia Lazaretou, 2015. "How can the use of historical macroeconomic data series support economic analysis and policy-making? The new Greek macro history database 1833-1949 as part of the large database of Southeastern Europe," Economic Bulletin, Bank of Greece, issue 41, pages 71-101, July.
    9. Evangelia Georgiou, 2015. "The use of cash and electronic payment instruments in the economy," Economic Bulletin, Bank of Greece, issue 41, pages 31-44, July.
    10. Faidon Kalfaoglou, 2015. "Alternative approaches to NPLs resolution. Case studies," Economic Bulletin, Bank of Greece, issue 41, pages 45-70, July.
    11. Ioannis Chatzivasiloglou, 2016. "Introduction to solvency ii of (re)insurance undertakings," Economic Bulletin, Bank of Greece, issue 44, pages 63-103, December.
    12. Sofia Anyfantaki, 2016. "The evolution of financial technology (FinTech)," Economic Bulletin, Bank of Greece, issue 44, pages 47-62, December.
    13. Sophia Lazaretou, 2016. "The Greek brain drain: the new pattern of Greek emigration during the recent crisis," Economic Bulletin, Bank of Greece, issue 43, pages 31-53, July.
    14. Styliani Belli & Constantina Backinezos, 2016. "The transition to the new methodology for the compilation of balance of payments statistics – BPM6," Economic Bulletin, Bank of Greece, issue 43, pages 19-29, July.
    15. Faidon Kalfaoglou, 2016. "Bank recapitalisation: a necessary but not sufficient condition for resuming lending," Economic Bulletin, Bank of Greece, issue 43, pages 55-75, July.
    16. Burcu Duygan-Bump & Charles Grant, 2008. "Household debt repayment behaviour: what role do institutions play?," Supervisory Research and Analysis Working Papers QAU08-3, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    17. Sophia Lazaretou, 2014. "The smart economy: cultural and creative industries in Greece: can they be a way out of the crisis?," Economic Bulletin, Bank of Greece, issue 39, pages 73-103, July.
    18. Constantina Backinezos & Stelios Panagiotou & Evangelia Vourvachaki, 2020. "Multiplier effects by sector: an input-output analysis of the Greek economy," Economic Bulletin, Bank of Greece, issue 52, pages 7-28, December.
    19. Faidon Kalfaoglou, 2014. "European banking union: “Europeanising” banks’ financial safety net," Economic Bulletin, Bank of Greece, issue 39, pages 37-72, July.
    20. Luisa ANDERLONI & Emanuele BACCHIOCCHI & Daniela VANDONE, 2011. "Household financial vulnerability: an empirical analysis," Departmental Working Papers 2011-02, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano, revised 03 Nov 2011.

    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:kap:jcopol:v:39:y:2016:i:1:p:41-62. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.