A Sample of Historical Bankruptcy Cases

Overview

Over 34 million individuals and businesses have used the federal bankruptcy law since 1898.

Would you be surprised to find out that researchers and policymakers interested in studying the causes and consequences of bankruptcy can readily download detailed information about just a few hundred bankrupt households and virtually no bankrupt businesses?

This project aims to stimulate interdisciplinary research on the causes and consequences of bankruptcy and on the history of credit markets more generally by:

• Photographing key documents from a representative sample of cases filed under the bankruptcy laws of 1898 and 1978 through partnership with the National Archives,

• Constructing a data set from the information on the key documents, and

• Distributing the data for widespread use through the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.

Progress

We took almost 525,000 photographs of documents from more than 25,000 cases files in 24 federal district courts located in 18 states.

We have published papers, working papers, dissertations, and undergraduate theses using data from cases filed in

• Maryland (Baltimore division) between 1940 and 2002,

• Mississippi (six division courts in the Northern and Southern districts) during the Great Depression, and

• Missouri (St. Louis court in the Eastern district and Kansas City court in the Western district) between 1898 and 1945.

We continue to transcribe and clean data.

Sponsors

We appreciate the support of the funders who contributed to the project to create A Sample of Historical Bankruptcy Cases.

American University Faculty Research Support Grant (2011-12)

American University College of Arts and Sciences Mellon Grant (2011)

Rutgers University Faculty Research Grant (2012)

Institute for New Economic Thinking (Grant ID INO11-00044), "Emergency Preservation of Federal Bankruptcy Court Records," (co-PI Michelle Miller, Rutgers Business School; subcontract to Tarun Sabarwal, University of Kansas) August 1, 2011-December 31, 2012

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (Grant Number 2011-6-16), "Digital Preservation of Bankruptcy Court Records, 1898-2000," (co-PI Michelle Miller, Rutgers Business School) September 15, 2011-October 31, 2012

National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges Endowment for Education, "Opening New Views into Bankruptcy and Credit Markets Using Court Records," January 1, 2013-December 31, 2013

National Science Foundation, Economics Program Dissertation Improvement Grant (SES-1324468), " Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: The Impact of Medicare on Bankruptcy," dissertation supervisor for Megan Fasules, August 15, 2013-July 31, 2014

National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges Endowment for Education, "Continuing Funding for Opening New Views into Bankruptcy and Credit Markets Using Court Records," January 1, 2014-June 30, 2014

National Science Foundation, Economics and Law and Social Sciences Programs (SES-1355742), " Collaborative Research: Opening New Views into Bankruptcy and Credit Markets Using Court Records," June 1, 2014-May 31, 2016

Loyola Marymount University, Rains Research Assistant Program, 2013-2016

Loyola Marymount University, Bellarmine Research Award Program, 2015-2016

Computing resources provided through National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation Program Grant (BCS-1039497).

Special access to the holdings of the National Archives is provided by Agreement with American University. The National Archives plans to make the photographs taken under this agreement available to the public through its Online Public Access.

Collaborators

Project Director

Mary Eschelbach Hansen, American University

Co-Investigators on Sponsored Awards

Michelle McKinnon Miller, Loyola Marymount University

Los Angeles

John Parman, The College of William & Mary

Tarun Sabarwal, The University of Kansas

Collaborators on Papers

Nicolas L. Ziebarth, Auburn University

Bradley A. Hansen, University of Mary Washington

John Pedersen, PhD Candidate, Binghamton University

Contributors to Proposals

Dov Cohen, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Robert M. Lawless, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and blogger at Credit Slips

Joseph Mason, Louisiana State University

Project Consultants and Advisors

Lendol Caldor, Augustana College

Richard Hynes, University of Virginia

Graduate Student Team Members

American University

Independent Research

Rutgers University

University of Kansas

Undergraduate Student Team Members

American University

Independent Research

University of Kansas

Loyola Marymount University (Los Angeles)

College of William & Mary