Debts discharge and entrepreneurship in England, c. 1880-1939

"The relation between the legal structure, entrepreneurship, and economic performance is being subject to increasing investigation in both economic theory and economic history. This paper contributes to this debate, focusing on the impact of debt discharge on personal entrepreneurship in England between 1880-1939. An institution called “discharge option” characterised common law bankruptcy regimes. Literally, the concept of discharge indicated that part of the debt was cancelled once bankruptcy procedure was accepted. In practice, this meant that not only were “discharged” entrepreneurs allowed to restart business, an option simply denied in other legal systems, but also that the earnings from any future activity could not be claimed for the settlement of past debts. Furthermore, debtors were allowed to keep a variable share of assets to facilitate restarting their business. It is evident that this set of norms represented a strong support to entrepreneurship, both ex-ante and ex-post bankruptcy. On the other hand, debt discharge, if too easily allowed, reduced the ex-ante constraining role of debt contracts, thus easing speculation, fraud, and entrepreneurial misbehaviour. Clearly, in order to support productive business, an issue emerged of selecting bona fide and competent entrepreneurs from fraudulent ones. Historians have usually argued that, in England, courts in charge of analysing and approving demands for discharge applied very efficient screening and monitoring devices. This thesis, however, is based only on the analysis of the formal characteristics of procedures and on patchy qualitative evidence. Using information from the London Gazette and quantitative techniques, this paper examines the conditions under which debtors were actually discharged and test the above hypothesis. The first section of the paper reviews the historical literature on discharge and shows the peculiar advantages scholars attribute to English bankruptcy procedures. In the following section we analyse the legal conditions debtors had to fulfill to be discharged under successive laws (1883, 1890, 1914). Discharge was either denied, or allowed, or allowed under certain conditions, or suspended for various terms of years, according to criteria, which changed with the evolution of the law. In the core section of the paper, data and information regarding approximately 3,200 cases are provided. Data refer to benchmark periods (1888-1889; 1912-1913; 1932-33) and provide information about: names, geographic origins and activities of debtors; name of the court in charge of the decision (London High Court or local courts); whether the discharge was allowed, denied, or suspended; reasons provided by judges to explain their decisions. Using econometric tools and qualitative evidence, this paper assesses the thesis of the efficiency of English screening procedures. Our conclusions challenge the standard picture. The courts’ decisions were rather consistent in London, but much less in county courts, where about half of total cases were analysed. Therefore debtors with similar conducts risked very different treatment according to the place in which their case was processed. On the other hand, entrepreneurs did not receive any favorable treatment vis-à-vis ordinary debtors, proving that the aim of promoting entrepreneurship and economic activity via debt discharge was not consistently implemented. In general English procedures contained screening devices, but they were less fair and consistent than hitherto believed. Considerable room for playing the system existed and entrepreneurial selection via debt discharge was far from perfect."