Bankruptcy Around the World:Explanations of its Relative Use

Claessens, Stijn ; Klapper, Leora F.

World Bank, Washington, D.C.

关键词: ACCOUNTING;    ASIAN DEVELOPMENT BANK;    ASSETS;    BANK LOANS;    BANKRUPTCY;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-2865
RP-ID  :  WPS2865

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

The recent literature on law and financehas drawn attention to the importance of creditor rights ininfluencing the development of financial systems and inaffecting firm corporate governance and financing patterns.Recent financial crises have also highlighted the importanceof insolvency systems to resolve corporate sector financialdistress. The literature and crises have emphasized thecomplex role of creditor rights, affecting not only theefficiency of ex-post resolution of distressed corporations,but also influencing ex-ante risk-taking incentives and aneconomy's degree of entrepreneurship more generally.The authors document how often bankruptcy is actually beingused for a panel of 35 countries. Next they investigate theeffects of specific design features of insolvency regimes inrelation to the quality of the countries' overalljudicial systems on the use of bankruptcy. The authors find,correcting for overall financial development andmacroeconomic shocks, that bankruptcies are higher inAnglo-Saxon countries and in market-oriented financialsystems characterized by weaker and multiple bankingrelationships. They also find that greater judicialefficiency is associated with more use of bankruptcy, butthat the combination of stronger creditor rights withgreater judicial efficiency leads to less use. The authorsfind that the presence of a "stay on assets" leadsto fewer bankruptcies independent of the efficiency of thejudicial system. These findings suggest that there areimportant incentive effects of insolvency systemsencouraging less risky behavior and more out-of-court settlements.