Bankruptcy and the COVID-19 Crisis

Research
1

Hi all,

Here’s our paper on the universe of bankruptcies in the United States during the COVID-19 crisis, which I’ve mentioned on this channel before. We haven’t incorporated any Safegraph data yet, but are keeping an eye out for courthouse POIs if and when they’re added!
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3690398#

TLDR: Household and small business bankruptcies are down significantly since mid-March, reversing the historical relationship between bankruptcy and unemployment in the time series and cross section. Large corporate bankruptcies are up significantly especially in retail and hospitality, but they make up a small share of all bankruptcy filings.

Here’s an explainer thread:
https://twitter.com/jialanw/status/1304100925435531265

Thanks!

2

Very interesting! The lay-of-the-land of how different types of bankruptcies are changing makes a lot of sense to me (although as you note as well is not what we might have expected in March!).