Improving Bankruptcy Procedure

This Article attempts to provide an economic perspective on bankruptcy procedure. In Parts II and III, we discuss the rationale for, and goals of, bankruptcy procedure. Part IV describes how existing procedures fall short of these goals. Our main point is that reorganization procedures like Chapter 11 are flawed because they mix the decision of who should get what with the decision of what should happen to the bankrupt company. In Part V, we turn to a procedure that we have proposed elsewhere, which we believe would improve on existing procedures. In Part VI, we discuss some practical difficulties concerning our proposal and how they might be resolved. Part VII contains concluding remarks.