I have just finished reading Lois Lupica’s paper on her impressive consumer bankruptcy fee study . This is a model of what empirical, law-and-society research should be – it combines data from electronic court records with focus groups and key player ... Read full article
Joshua Goodman at the Harvard Kennedy School and I have a new paper out examining the impact of Chapter 13 cramdown on the cost and availability of mortgage credit. Historically, when cramdown was permitted in some judicial districts prior to 1993 it was ... Read full article
Ezra Klein has joined the melee over the Obama Administration's housing policy failure with an apologia for the Administration. Klein argues: The right question on housing, then, is not whether the administration’s policies proved insufficient. ... Read full article
I've got a new short article out about swaps clearinghouses. It's a response piece to an article by Prof. Yesha Yadav . ... Read full article
Bill Bratton and I have a new paper out , called A Transactional Genealogy of Scandal: from Michael Milken to Enron to Goldman Sachs. ... Read full article
For readers putting together course syllabi in the bankruptcy area, this post is just a reminder that my able research assistant, Scott Cromar, and I put together ePub and Kindle versions of the Bankruptcy Code and Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure. ... Read full article
One of our recent grads tells me that the recent Texas bar exam had a question on bankruptcy law. That got me wondering how many states test bankruptcy law on their bar exam. Two minutes of searching around on Google did not reveal any others, but by then ... Read full article
When I read economics articles, I'm often struck by the absence of citations to the legal literature. Citations to legal works, even when very much on point, are frequently missing from literature reviews and citation lists. There are exceptions to ... Read full article
The American College of Bankruptcy (ACB) in cooperation with the Biddle Law Library at the University of Pennsylvania has made available a great and often overlooked resource for scholars who prefer to study "law on the ground" instead of just ... Read full article
As many readers of this blog will know, the Endowment for Education from the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges has supported many research projects that have contributed to a better understanding of all sorts of issues involving debt and ... Read full article
On May 18-19, the Center for Consumer Law at the University of Houston Law Center will hold its sixth bi-annual Teaching Consumer Law Conference. This year’s theme is “Teaching Consumer Law in an Evolving Economy.” I have always enjoyed this conference as ... Read full article
The Creditors' and Debtors' Rights section of the Association of American Law Schools invites paper proposals for the January 2013 conference program. The program theme is "The Great Deleveraging: Bankruptcy after the Crisis, Formal and ... Read full article
Here's a plug for a conference on mobile payments that the FTC is hosting next week. It will be webcast live. The agenda is here . I'm one of the speakers. ... Read full article
The Fed has just released their data from the 2007-2009 panel Survey of Consumer Finances. The SCF, conducted every three years, includes hundreds of variables on the assets, liabilities, income, and financial product shopping and utilization of ... Read full article
A few weeks ago, Katie Porter noted the release of the new book, Broke: How Debt Bankrupts the Middle Class . We are trying to feature posts from the authors of Broke about their contributions. Today's post comes from Professor Angela Littwiin of the ... Read full article
It's the time of year when professors, including those who are adjunct professors or are interested in teaching as adjuncts, submit their proposed courses for the next academic year. Many of us teach a general 3 or 4 unit bankruptcy course that uses ... Read full article
Today I'm off to the Wharton Restructuring and Turnaround Conference , which looks to be a great, high level discussion of all things chapter 11ish. But it is surely a sign of the times that the keynote speaker is a banking lawyer. ... Read full article
In the introductory chapter of the book, Broke: How Debt Bankrupts the Middle Class , I present some data about consumer debt levels in the United States. ... Read full article
A new study by Credit Slips own Jean Braucher and Bob Lawless (with Dov Cohen) on race and bankruptcy filings received very prominent and well-deserved page A1 coverage in the New York Times. It's a fabulous study, and it's wonderful to see it ... Read full article
