While prior papers have examined the impact of state exemption and garnishment laws on the average household, this paper is the first to examine their heterogeneous impact. In my theoretical model, households choose between three options: repayment, bankruptcy, and informal bankruptcy (non-repayment without the benefit of the formal bankruptcy process). The model makes two predictions about the...

6007 Background: The risk of bankruptcy for cancer patients is not well characterized and may vary by cancer type, treatment, and personal factors. Linking the Washington State SEER registry with Western District of Washington bankruptcy court records, we measured the rate of bankruptcy after cancer and identified factors that increased risk among common cancers. METHODS We included adults ag...

This paper, prepared for the 2001 Washburn Torts Seminar, argues that tort law has some properties that make it superior to statute-based regulatory schemes as a system of environmental protection. In particular, two arguments, one based on enforcer-malfeasance and one based on information, suggest that tort law is preferable to statutory regulation. I sketch these arguments and apply them to n...

This article explores the key issues involved in the attempts at reform of the present medical malpractice system. Investigating the effects that federal tort reform legislation would have on physicians, patients, lawyers, and the medical malpractice insurers, Dr. Gunnar succinctly outlines the issues surrounding the present "crisis in healthcare" and explores the separate interests involved. T...

For over forty years, tort reform proponents have disparaged the tort system as a lottery, arguing that it produces arbitrary outcomes. This criticism has been offered as justification for reform proposals that would replace the tort system with some form of no-fault accident insurance. We do not oppose no-fault alternatives to tort, but this Essay is not the place to weigh the merits of one or...

This paper studies driving factors behind the timing of state-level tort reform enactments between 1971 and 2005. Using discrete time hazard models, we find the level of litigation activity, as measured by incurred liability insurance losses and premiums, number of lawyers at the state level, and tort cases commenced at the state level and national level, to be the most important and robust det...

This paper surveys the research on optimal consumption and investment problem of an agent who is subject to bankruptcy that has a speciied utility (reward or penalty). The bankruptcy utility, modeled by a parameter, may be the result of welfare subsidies, the agent's innate ability to recover from bankruptcy, psychic costs associated with bankruptcy, etc. Models with nonnegative consumption, po...

With the recent financial crisis and European debt crisis, corporate bankruptcy prediction has become an increasingly important issue for financial institutions. Many statistical and intelligent methods have been proposed, however, there is no overall best method has been used in predicting corporate bankruptcy. Recent studies suggest ensemble learning methods may have potential applicability i...

The thesis of this Article is that making more health insurance benefits available to more people, far from lessening injury victims' proclivity to sue in tort (as conventional wisdom argues), will increase such suits. Thus, it is necessary to accompany any increases in health care coverage with the type of tort reform proposed herein. This reform would allow parties to opt out of the cumbersom...

In this paper we analyze the relationship between strictness of employment protection and efficiency of bankruptcy law. We argue that country’s legal tradition provides the appropriate institutional proxy to explain the nature of such relationship. We find that for civil law countries where bankruptcy procedures are more inefficient a stricter employment protection policy is enforced. For commo...