The challenges of bankruptcy reform

The 2008 financial crisis was followed by a global economic downturn, credit crunch, and reduction in cross-border lending, trade finance, remittances, and foreign direct investment, which adversely affected businesses around the world. The consequent increase in the number of firm insolvencies in the financial and corporate sectors highlights the importance of efficient bankruptcy laws. This paper summarizes the theoretical and empirical literature on bankruptcy design, discusses the challenges of introducing and implementing bankruptcy reforms, and presents examples of how policymakers are trying to use the current economic downturn as an opportunity to engage in meaningful reform of the bankruptcy process.Bankruptcy and Resolution of Financial Distress,Debt Markets,Access to Finance,Deposit Insurance,Banks&Banking Reform

Corporate insolvency proceedings: A case of visegrad four

Insolvency proceeding and liquidation of bankrupt companies are important topics in days of economic slowdown which affected all economies after financial crisis. This paper aims to find main differences between insolvency proceedings in the countries of Visegrad four. The main goal is to describe insolvency law in member countries and then to compare it from the poin of view of main actors. This comparison can help to find which changes and ideas could be applied to improve and make more effective the Czech insolvency system. The countries of Visegrad four was selected because of their common history and similar economic development. First of all, the legal background of insolvency proceedings which is possible for legal entities in these countries is examined. Then this paper deals with insolvency proceedings from the point of view of their participants - creditors, debtors and insolvency administrator. We have found that insolvency proceedings in these countries are very similar but there is still some inspiration for the Czech insolvency system

Prospect theory and the effects of bankruptcy laws on entrepreneurial aspirations

We apply prospect theory to explain how personal and corporate bankruptcy laws affect risk perceptions of entrepreneurs at time of entry and therefore their growth ambitions. Previous theories have reached ambiguous conclusions as to whether countries with more debtor-friendly bankruptcy laws (i.e. laws that are more forgiving towards debtors in bankruptcy proceedings) are likely to have more entrepreneurs, or whether, creditorfriendly regimes have positive effects on new ventures via enhanced incentives for the supply of credit to entrepreneurs. Responding to this ambiguity, we apply prospect theory to propose that entrepreneurs do not attach the same significance to different elements of bankruptcy codes—and to explain which aspects of debtor-friendly bankruptcy laws matter more to entrepreneurs. Based on this, we derive and confirm hypotheses about the impact of aspects of bankruptcy codes on entrepreneurial activity using the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor combined with data on both personal and corporate bankruptcyregulations for 15 developed OECD countries. We use multilevel random coefficient logistic regressions to take account of the hierarchical nature of the data (country and individual levels). Because entrepreneurs and creditors are sensitive to different elements of the codes, there is scope for optimisation of the legal design of bankruptcy law to achieve both an adequate supply of credit and to encourage high-ambition entrepreneurship

Debt Recovery in Firm Liquidations: Do Liquidation Trustees Matter?

Insolvency systems play a crucial role in protection of creditor rights, yet micro-level empirical evidence on the functioning of insolvency regimes worldwide is sparse. We investigate whether creditors’ recovery of outstanding claims, a measure of ex-post efficiency of an insolvency regime, depends on the characteristics of the trustee delegated the administration of the liquidation proceedings. To this end, we draw on a novel dataset of firm liquidations from Slovenia and exploit courts’ de facto random assignment of firm liquidation cases to licensed liquidation trustees. Using a wide range of specifications and controls, we find that a subset of trustee characteristics indeed matters for debt recovery. Thus, ex-post efficiency of an insolvency regime depends not only on its formal rules and procedures, but also on who implements them in practice

Terrorism and Global Business Performance

This paper contributes to the literature on business performance by investigating the relationship between terrorism and global business performance at country level. A measure of a country's distance from the frontier score of the World Bank's Doing Business index is used to proxy for business performance. The results of the fixed-effects estimations based on 173 countries over 7 years (2009–2017) show that terrorism has no significant relationship with global business performance. We then partition our sample into developed, developing and fragile countries. The results still show that there is no robust significant relationship between terrorism and business performance for the sub-samples of developed and developing countries. However, the results based on the fragile countries' sub-sample suggest a significant negative relationship between terrorism and business performance. The results are consistent with an alternative measure of business performance and estimation technique that controls for endogeneity.</p