Conference Concept

The Bankruptcy Success Modeling Conference

UCLA-LoPucki Bankruptcy Research Database (BRD)

This Conference will bring together eighteen leading bankruptcy scholars at the UCLA School of Law on February 15, 2013. Our purpose is to begin developing empirical answers to the most important policy question in the field: What causes reorganizations to succeed or fail? The project models success as a function of general economic conditions, the bankrupt firm's financial condition, and the bankruptcy procedures employed. Data collection for this project has been in progress for more than two years. The project's objective is a set of statistical models that can identify, predict, and explain success, and evaluate bankruptcy procedures. Determining the meaning of "success" is thus part of the problem to be solved.

The Conference is supported by grants from National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges Endowment for Education and the Anthony H.N. Schnelling ABI Endowment Fund.

The Conference's purposes are to encourage and focus bankruptcy success modeling, share preliminary results, and determine the direction of future data collection and analysis. Conference procedure will emulate that of the highly successful agenda-setting conference we held at the UCLA School of Law in February 2011.

The BRD furnishes participants with monthly updates of the data. Each participant has agreed to (1) analyze some portion of the BRD data, (2) by January 10, 2013, furnish about two or three tables or graphs on PowerPoint slides, and (3) prior to the conference, review the slides prepared by the other participants. The tables and graphs will provide the bases for our Conference discussions. Participants will very briefly introduce their own tables and graphs and then participate in open, largely unmoderated, round-table discussions. A summary of the Conference will be prepared by a Reporter yet to be named.

Participants are welcome to collect additional data, use data from other sources along with BRD data, and publish papers arising out of the conference in journals of their own choosing. Participants have access to a nearly complete set of Pacer dockets for the BRD cases and the BRD's technology for batch-searching them. The search-program output contains the docket entries and direct links to the documents of interest, on PACER.