Collaborative Research: Opening New Views into Bankruptcy and Credit Markets Using Court Records

自1898年以来，美国已有超过4000万份个人和企业破产申请，但没有良好的、公开的数据集来支持对破产制度运作和破产对经济影响的研究。该裁决支持创建和分发根据原始法院记录构建的数据，是一个更大项目的一部分，该项目的目标是产生一个代表1898年至1990年代电子法院记录出现之间所有破产案件的数据集。数据集将包括通过法律系统进行的案件进展的详细情况，以及家庭和企业的负债、资产和收入的详细情况。这些数据将通过大学间政治和社会研究联盟分发，预计将促进社会科学领域的研究。这些数据将为研究人员提供新的方法，以调查破产趋势随着时间的推移和跨空间的关联。这类研究课题的例子包括：1930年代银行救助的影响，妇女和少数族裔申请的趋势，联邦法院地区内地方法院申请结果的差异，联邦医疗保险对破产者医疗债务的影响，联邦紧急援助对破产的影响，通过所谓的“战略”申请可能滥用法律，对高息信贷的监管对破产者债务的影响，债务解决时间对经济衰退复苏的影响，以及破产法使用中的种族差异。新数据还将支持破产后的研究，并将对其他领域的学者有用，如法律研究和历史。使用新数据进行的研究可能会影响私人法律实践、官方法院实践以及立法机构、州金融监管机构、消费者金融保护局和美联储制定的政策。消费者权益倡导者也可以利用这项研究来设计财务教育材料，以增强家庭财务健康。

There have been more than 40 million personal and business bankruptcy filings in the U.S. since 1898, but there is no good, publicly-available data set to support research on the functioning of the bankruptcy system and the influence of bankruptcy on the economy. This award supports the creation and distribution of data constructed from original court records and is part of a larger project that has a goal of producing a data set representative of all bankruptcy cases filed between 1898 and the advent of electronic court records in the 1990s. The data set will include details of the progress of cases through the legal system and details of the liabilities, assets, and incomes of households and businesses. The data will be distributed through the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research and are expected to stimulate research across the social sciences. This data will provide researchers new ways to investigate trends in bankruptcy over time and correlates across space. Examples of such research topics are: the impact of bank bailouts in the 1930s, trends in filings by women and minorities, variation in outcomes of filings across local courts within federal court districts, the impact of Medicare on the medical debt of the bankrupt, the impact of federal emergency aid on bankruptcy, potential abuse of the law through so-called 'strategic' filing, the effect of regulations on high-interest credit on the debts of the bankrupt, the impact of the time-to-resolution of debt obligations on recovery from recession, and racial disparities in the use of the bankruptcy law. The new data will also support research beyond bankruptcy and will be of use to scholars in other fields like legal studies and history. The research conducted with the new data has the potential to impact private legal practice, official court practice, and policy set by legislatures, state financial regulators, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the Federal Reserve. The research may also be used by consumer advocates to design materials for financial education to enhance household financial well-being.