Personal Bankruptcy and the Level of Entrepreneurial Activity
研究发现美国各州个人破产豁免额越高，居民拥有企业的概率越大，最高可比低豁免州高出35%，为风险规避的潜在创业者提供了财富保险。
The U.S. personal bankruptcy system functions as a bankruptcy system for small businesses as well as consumers, because debts of noncorporate firms are personal liabilities of the firms’ owners. If the firm fails, the owner has an incentive to file for bankruptcy, since both business debts and the owner’s personal debts will be discharged. In bankruptcy, the owner must give up assets above a fixed exemption level. Because exemption levels are set by the states, they vary widely. We show that higher bankruptcy exemption levels benefit potential entrepreneurs who are risk averse by providing partial wealth insurance and therefore that the probability of owning a business increases as the exemption level increases. We test this prediction and find that the probability of households owning businesses is 35 percent higher if they live in states with unlimited rather than low exemptions.