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16 results

  • 2 - Financialised Capitalism and the Centrality of Household Debt

  • Joseph Spooner, London School of Economics and Political Science
  • Book:
    Bankruptcy
    Published online:
    22 March 2019
    Print publication:
    11 April 2019, pp 37-64

  • Summary

    By exploring the wider political economy that has led to a systemic dependence on high household debt levels, this chapter aims to discuss the structural environment influencing household over-indebtedness and bankruptcy. This illustrates risks inherent in a model of neoliberal financialised capitalism requiring ever-expanding household debt to maintain economic growth and household living standards, and the consequent need for insurance mechanisms against associated dangers. The presentation of this structural account is a first step towards arguing for bankruptcy’s role as an insurance mechanism of last resort against the risks inherent the contemporary economic order.

  • 3 - Consumer Bankruptcy Theory and the Case for Debt Relief

  • Joseph Spooner, London School of Economics and Political Science
  • Book:
    Bankruptcy
    Published online:
    22 March 2019
    Print publication:
    11 April 2019, pp 65-111

  • Summary

    English policymakers, judges and commentators have not wholly accepted the extent to which bankruptcy can act as an ‘insurer of last resort’ against the risk and instability necessarily present in a regime of financialised capitalism dependent on high levels of household debt. Certainly, they have not fully recognised the potential of the law to deliver public policy benefits by offering more expansive household debt relief. Instead, English law is ambivalent in its aims, and stakeholders tend to treat the law as serving two contrasting purposes: on the one hand debt collection and the maximisation of returns to creditors, and on the other the provision of debt relief to over-indebted individuals under the ‘fresh start’ policy.

  • 8 - Conclusion

  • Joseph Spooner, London School of Economics and Political Science
  • Book:
    Bankruptcy
    Published online:
    22 March 2019
    Print publication:
    11 April 2019, pp 271-281

  • Summary

    Chapter 8’s conclusion opens by summarising the above analysis and by illustrating the global relevance of the critique of English law advanced. It uses insight from the English case to critique contemporary approaches of international organisations that tend to view bankruptcy as a debt collection tool and favour ‘market-based debt resolution’ mechanisms for addressing household debt problems. In turn, the chapter outlines the implications of the social insurance theory for policy design, and how abstract ideas can be translated into technical features of bankruptcy law.

  • 5 - The Limits of Contractual Consumer Bankruptcy

  • Joseph Spooner, London School of Economics and Political Science
  • Book:
    Bankruptcy
    Published online:
    22 March 2019
    Print publication:
    11 April 2019, pp 147-173

  • Summary

    This chapter critiques the contractual and marketized model of English personal insolvency law and questions the general appropriateness of ‘market-based debt resolution’ in the context of contemporary household over-indebtedness. A market failure analysis highlights how key assumptions of the efficient market hypothesis do not hold under these conditions. While Chapter 3 illustrated the contracting failures that arise in ex ante credit markets, such failures are even more likely to arise in the ex post bankruptcy market. Principal-agency problems, information asymmetries and behavioural biases lead to sub-optimal outcomes. Consequently, a bankruptcy system based on debtor choice between procedures, and dominated by consensual renegotiation, is likely to produce a ‘market friendly’ approach only where the ‘market’ is understood as industries of creditors and intermediaries. Contrary to the ideal of mutually beneficial exchange, it is increasingly visible that the outcomes produced by such an approach are detrimental to debtors. They produce repayment plans enduring for long periods and involving high repayments, allowing creditors and intermediaries to maximise their returns while generating extensive costs for debtors and social costs. Given the increasingly recognised public interest case for household debt relief, these outcomes raise pressing public policy concerns.

  • 6 - The Austere Creditor: Austerity, Bankruptcy Policy and Government Debt Collection

  • Joseph Spooner, London School of Economics and Political Science
  • Book:
    Bankruptcy
    Published online:
    22 March 2019
    Print publication:
    11 April 2019, pp 174-215

  • Summary

    This chapter examines how austerity policies have shaped English consumer bankruptcy law in the decade following the financial crisis. Austerity accelerates the ‘loans for wages’ and ‘credit/welfare state trade-off’ trends of contemporary financialised capitalism, as wage stagnation and a shrinking social safety net leave the debt economy reliant on household borrowing to maintain growth and living standards. In addition, austerity adds newfound zeal to government debt collection, increasing pressure on debt-laded households. These conditions challenge bankruptcy law, by increasing need for household debt relief and changing the nature of problem debt from well-examined mortgage and consumer credit to understudied ‘priority’ debts such as rent arrears and government debts. This environment provides a crucible in which to test English law’s commitment to the social insurance vision of bankruptcy.

  • 1 - Introduction

  • Joseph Spooner, London School of Economics and Political Science
  • Book:
    Bankruptcy
    Published online:
    22 March 2019
    Print publication:
    11 April 2019, pp 1-36

  • Summary

    This book arrives a decade after the Global Financial Crisis and the beginning of the Great Recession, at a time when much of the world still labours under problems vividly brought to light by these events. The starting point of this book is that there is now significant evidence to link pressing policy problems of economic stagnation, inequality and political discord to high levels of household debt. This realisation begins to build a case for debt relief. The opening chapter begins by establishing the centrality of household debt to contemporary financialised capitalism, while presenting empirical evidence of high household debt levels. The chapter focuses in particular on the distribution of household debt and the policy implications of the unequal sharing of the economy’s debt burden. It also explores the concept of mass household over-indebtedness, and the policy responses necessitated by the development of this phenomenon.

  • 4 - A Consumer Bankruptcy Marketplace

  • Joseph Spooner, London School of Economics and Political Science
  • Book:
    Bankruptcy
    Published online:
    22 March 2019
    Print publication:
    11 April 2019, pp 112-146

  • Summary

    Given increasing recognition of problems associated with high household debt levels, and particularly after the role household debt played in the global financial crisis, one might have expected progressive bankruptcy law reforms to have featured prominently among post-crisis policy responses. This chapter argues, however, that the past decade has seen a retreat of English bankruptcy law. Hundreds of thousands of debtors have become trapped in Debt Management Plans (DMPs) and Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVA) - consensual, contractual and voluntary repayment arrangements agreed with creditors and delivered by intermediaries, which offer little debt reduction and may persist for years or even decades. Only a minority avail of the more generous debt relief offered in theory by the Debt Relief Order (DRO) and bankruptcy procedures, but often inaccessible in practice. Debt relief is available to most debtors only on contractarian market terms, rather than as of right.

  • 7 - Moral Hazard and Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention

  • Joseph Spooner, London School of Economics and Political Science
  • Book:
    Bankruptcy
    Published online:
    22 March 2019
    Print publication:
    11 April 2019, pp 216-270

  • Summary

    The question of moral hazard – the potential for insurance against risk to reduce incentives to guard against an insured loss – is central to debates regarding bankruptcy and its function as insurance against the risks of a debt dependent contemporary economy. The concept of moral hazard offers a useful tool for analysing the law’s safeguards against abuse of debt relief. In using this concept to evaluate English law’s regulation of debtor (mis)conduct, the paper focuses in particular on the innovative Bankruptcy Restrictions Order regime, and its unique potential to establish contemporary standards of reasonable consumer borrowing.

Bankruptcy
  • The Case for Relief in an Economy of Debt
  • Joseph Spooner
  • Published online:
    22 March 2019
    Print publication:
    11 April 2019
  • A decade after the Global Financial Crisis and Great Recession, developed economies continue to struggle under excessive household debt. While exacerbating inequality and political unrest, this debt - when combined with wage stagnation and a shrinking welfare state - has played a key role in maintaining economic growth and allowing households faced with rising costs of living to make ends meet. In Bankruptcy: The Case for Relief in an Economy of Debt, Joseph Spooner examines this economic model and finds it increasingly unsustainable. In a call to action to reduce debt burden, he turns to bankruptcy law, which is uniquely situated as a mechanism of social insurance against the risks of a debt-dependent economy. This book should be read by anyone interested in understanding the problem of consumer debt and how best to address it.

  • Implications of Prenatal Exposure to the Spring 2011 Alabama and Missouri Tornadoes on Birth Outcomes

  • Part of
  • Kenneth E. Christopher, Panagiota Kitsantas, Kiara K. Spooner, Joseph F. Robare, Dan Hanfling
  • Journal:
    Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness / Volume 13 / Issue 2 / April 2019
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    20 June 2018, pp. 279-286
  • Objective

    Despite emerging evidence of the detrimental effects of natural disasters on maternal and child health, little is known about exposure to tornadoes during the prenatal period and its impact on birth outcomes. We examined the relationship between prenatal exposure to the spring 2011 tornado outbreak in Alabama and Joplin (Missouri) and adverse birth outcomes.

    Methods

    We conducted a retrospective, cross-sectional cohort study using the 2010-2012 linked infant births and deaths data set from the National Center for Health Statistics for tornado-affected counties in Alabama (n=126,453) and Missouri (Joplin, n=6,897). Chi-square and logistic regression analyses were performed to estimate associations between prenatal exposure to tornadoes and birth outcomes.

    Results

    Prenatal exposure to the tornado incidents did not influence birth weight outcomes. Women exposed to Alabama tornadoes were less likely to have a preterm birth compared to unexposed mothers (OR: 0.93, 95% CI: 0.91, 0.96). Preterm births among Joplin-tornado exposed mothers were slightly higher (13%) compared with unexposed mothers (11.2%). Exposed mothers from Joplin were also more likely to have a cesarean section compared to their counterparts (OR: 1.14, 95% CI: 1.02, 1.26).

    Conclusions

    We found no association between tornado exposure and adverse birth weight and infant mortality rates. Our findings suggest that prenatal exposure can amplify the odds for a cesarean section. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2019;13:279–286)