Strategic or Non-Strategic: The Role of Financial Benefit in Bankruptcy

A partial test for strategic behavior in bankruptcy filing may be formulated by testing whether consumers manipulate their debt and filing decision jointly, or not: that is, testing for endogeneity of financial benefit and the bankruptcy filing decision. Using joint maximum likelihood estimation of an extended discrete choice model, test results are consistent with non-strategic filing: financial benefit is exogenous to the filing decision. This result is confirmed in two different datasets (PSID and SCF). This result is consistent with an ex ante low net gain from a bankruptcy filing; a type of “rational inattention” to rare events such as bankruptcy.