IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jlawec/doi10.1086-670911.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How Does Bankruptcy Law Impact the Elderly's Business and Housing Decisions?

Author

Listed:
  • Nadia Greenhalgh-Stanley
  • Shawn Rohlin

Abstract

The elderly are the population most likely to file for bankruptcy, with filings increasing by 150 percent from 1991 to 2007. This is likely because they live with relatively flat incomes and high medical expenses, and their retirement and housing assets are typically exempt from bankruptcy filings. In addition, nine states adopted higher asset exemptions specifically for the elderly. Using the Health and Retirement Study and recent state-by-time variation in homestead exemptions, we are the first to test whether the benefits of partial wealth insurance or the cost of supply-side credit constraints are predominant for the elderly. Using pooled cross-sectional analysis, we find that an increase in a state's homestead exemption increases the elderly's home equity and business ownership; however, the credit constraint is dominant in unlimited-exemption states, which decreases home and business ownership. Panel analysis reveals that an increase in the homestead exemption positively affects home ownership rates and home equity.

Suggested Citation

  • Nadia Greenhalgh-Stanley & Shawn Rohlin, 2013. "How Does Bankruptcy Law Impact the Elderly's Business and Housing Decisions?," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(2), pages 417-451.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jlawec:doi:10.1086/670911
    DOI: 10.1086/670911
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/670911
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/670911
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/670911?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. Corradin, S. & Gropp, R. & Huizinga, H.P. & Laeven, L., 2010. "Who Invests in Home Equity to Exempt Wealth from Bankruptcy?," Discussion Paper 2010-118, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    2. Reint Gropp & John Karl Scholz & Michelle J. White, 1997. "Personal Bankruptcy and Credit Supply and Demand," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(1), pages 217-251.
    3. James J. Heckman, 1976. "The Common Structure of Statistical Models of Truncation, Sample Selection and Limited Dependent Variables and a Simple Estimator for Such Models," NBER Chapters, in: Annals of Economic and Social Measurement, Volume 5, number 4, pages 475-492, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Wenli Li & Michelle J. White & Ning Zhu, 2011. "Did Bankruptcy Reform Cause Mortgage Defaults to Rise?," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 3(4), pages 123-147, November.
    5. Fan, Wei & White, Michelle J, 2003. "Personal Bankruptcy and the Level of Entrepreneurial Activity," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 46(2), pages 543-567, October.
    6. Jeremy Berkowitz & Michelle J. White, 2004. "Bankruptcy and Small Firms' Access to Credit," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 35(1), pages 69-84, Spring.
    7. 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.
    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. Stephanie Moulton & Donald Haurin & Samuel Dodini & Maximilian D. Schmeiser, 2020. "How federally insured reverse mortgages affect the credit outcomes of older adults," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(4), pages 1298-1327, December.
    2. Dal Borgo, Mariela, 2021. "Do bankruptcy protection levels affect households' demand for stocks?," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 564, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    3. Eric Helland & Anupam B. Jena & Dan P. Ly & Seth A. Seabury, 2016. "Self-insuring against Liability Risk: Evidence from Physician Home Values in States with Unlimited Homestead Exemptions," NBER Working Papers 22031, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Benjamin B Boozer & S. Keith Lowe & Robert J. Landry III, 2014. "Personal Financial Decisions: A Study of Changes in Homestead Exemption Levels and Consumer Bankruptcy Choices," The International Journal of Business and Finance Research, The Institute for Business and Finance Research, vol. 8(4), pages 17-26.

    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. Wenli Li & Ishani Tewari & Michelle J. White, 2014. "Using bankruptcy to reduce foreclosures: does strip-down of mortgages affect the supply of mortgage credit?," Working Papers 14-35, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    2. Michelle J. White, 2005. "Economic Analysis of Corporate and Personal Bankruptcy Law," NBER Working Papers 11536, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Rajashri Chakrabarti & Nathaniel Pattison, 2019. "Auto Credit and the 2005 Bankruptcy Reform: The Impact of Eliminating Cramdowns," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 32(12), pages 4734-4766.
    4. Corradin, Stefano & Gropp, Reint & Huizinga, Harry & Laeven, Luc, 2016. "The effect of personal bankruptcy exemptions on investment in home equity," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 77-98.
    5. Mathur, Aparna, 2013. "Beyond bankruptcy: Does the US bankruptcy code provide a fresh start to entrepreneurs?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(11), pages 4198-4216.
    6. Wenli Li & Ishani Tewari & Michelle J. White, 2019. "Using Bankruptcy to Reduce Foreclosures: Does Strip-Down of Mortgages Affect the Mortgage Market?," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 55(1), pages 59-87, February.
    7. Kelly D. Edmiston, 2005. "New insights in the determinants of regional variation in personal bankruptcy filing rates," Community Affairs Research Working Paper 2005-05, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    8. Jonathan Fisher & Angela Lyons, 2010. "Information and credit access: using bankruptcy as a signal," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(25), pages 3175-3193.
    9. Sadeghi, Ali & Kibler, Ewald, 2022. "Do bankruptcy laws matter for entrepreneurship? A Synthetic Control Method analysis of a bankruptcy reform in Finland," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 18(C).
    10. repec:ces:ifodic:v:13:y:2016:i:4:p:19191579 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Corradin, S. & Gropp, R. & Huizinga, H.P. & Laeven, L., 2010. "Who Invests in Home Equity to Exempt Wealth from Bankruptcy?," Discussion Paper 2010-118, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    12. Fossen, Frank M., 2011. "Personal Bankruptcy Law, Wealth and Entrepreneurship: Theory and Evidence from the Introduction of a "Fresh Start"," IZA Discussion Papers 5459, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Berger, Allen N. & Cerqueiro, Geraldo & Penas, María F., 2011. "Does debtor protection really protect debtors? Evidence from the small business credit market," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(7), pages 1843-1857, July.
    14. Sumit Agarwal & Souphala Chomsisengphet & Chunlin Liu & Lawrence Mielnicki, 2005. "Impact of State Exemption Laws on Small Business Bankruptcy Decision," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 71(3), pages 620-635, January.
    15. P. Arca & Gianfranco E. Atzeni & LG Deidda, 2013. "Economics of bankruptcy exemption: Signaling value of collateral, cost of credit and access to credit," Working Paper CRENoS 201302, Centre for North South Economic Research, University of Cagliari and Sassari, Sardinia.
    16. Jeffrey Traczynski, 2016. "Personal Bankruptcy and Social Insurance," ifo DICE Report, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 13(4), pages 23-27, 02.
    17. Geraldo Cerqueiro & María Fabiana Penas, 2017. "How Does Personal Bankruptcy Law Affect Startups?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(7), pages 2523-2554.
    18. Ulf von Lilienfeld-Toal & Dilip Mookherjee, 2005. "Bankruptcy Law, Bonded Labor And Inequality," Boston University - Department of Economics - Working Papers Series WP2005-035, Boston University - Department of Economics.
    19. Akyol, Ahmet & Athreya, Kartik, 2011. "Credit and self-employment," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 363-385, March.
    20. Tal Gross & Raymond Kluender & Feng Liu & Matthew J. Notowidigdo & Jialan Wang, 2021. "The Economic Consequences of Bankruptcy Reform," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(7), pages 2309-2341, July.
    21. Dilip Mookherjee, 2006. "Decentralization, Hierarchies, and Incentives: A Mechanism Design Perspective," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 44(2), pages 367-390, June.

    More about this item

    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:ucp:jlawec:doi:10.1086/670911. 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: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLE .

    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.