Bankruptcy, Discharge, and the Emergence of Debtor Rights in Eighteenth-Century England
研究了1706年英格兰破产法首次允许债务人在未全额还款前退出破产状态，这一变化如何影响债权人、债务人及经济活动，并估计了债务免除的采用率及其对破产者二次创业的作用。
Bankruptcy is a precise legal process defining, ex ante , the rules for allocation of assets when debtors fail to repay their legally constituted debts. Ultimately, these rules determine willingness to lend and to borrow, and thus economic growth. In 1706, Parliament in England passed a bankruptcy statute that allowed, for the first time, bankrupts to exit the state of bankruptcy prior to full repayment of all debts. This represented a fundamental change in English bankruptcy rules: creditors could now choose to discharge a bankrupt. Obviously, bankrupts benefitted from such a discharge, but creditors could also benefit from greater asset revelation. We document that discharge was quickly adopted, and estimate that many bankrupts received a second chance in business.