PhD Dissertation "Rules and Norms of Consumer Insolvency and Debt Relief: A Comparison and Classification of Personal Bankruptcy Systems in 15 Economically Advanced Countries" (Front matter) (original) (raw)

This is the front matter of my PhD dissertation, which was submitted to the University of Bremen in March 2014. The thesis describes, compares and classifies the consumer bankruptcy systems of 15 advanced capitalist societies in regard to the substantive rules and underlying norms of consumer debt relief. --- UPDATE 2021: the full version of my PhD thesis is now published Open Access here: https://doi.org/10.26092/elib/454 From the introduction to the PhD thesis: "In the past decades, the growth of consumer credit has led to increased debt problems of private households, and many economically advanced countries have responded to this new social risk of consumer over-indebtedness by adopting consumer bankruptcy laws that enable insolvent individuals a financial ‘fresh start’ via discharge of debts. By cancelling an insolvent debtor’s responsibility for the payment of specified debts, personal bankruptcy restores an individual’s economic and social participation and thus tackles the negative effects of household over-indebtedness on individual debtors and their dependants as well as on credit markets, labor markets, health care systems, welfare states, judicial systems and society at large. Consumer bankruptcy is the last resort for the ‘casualties’ of modern consumer societies and finance-driven economies, and each year millions of over-indebted individuals file a petition for debt relief and obtain a financial ‘fresh start’ and a second chance in economic and social life. The present study describes, compares and classifies the substantive rules and underlying norms of consumer bankruptcy regimes in fifteen advanced economies: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, England and Wales, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Scotland, Sweden and the United States of America. The study pursues four aims: First, it aims to advance consumer bankruptcy research – and particularly the new field of ‘comparative consumer bankruptcy’ – by providing theory-guided and broadly applicable conceptualizations of consumer bankruptcy and its actors, aims and building blocks. Second, the study offers the first systematic and detailed comparison of consumer bankruptcy systems from a broad range of legal, economic and social-political traditions and thus enables academics, legislators and legal practitioners to improve their understanding of the substantive rules of consumer insolvency and debt relief in various countries. Third, the study provides an empirical classification of consumer bankruptcy systems in advanced economies based on a theory-driven framework, a new comparative dataset, and hierarchical cluster analysis as classification method; this classification shows that consumer bankruptcy systems differ not only in their substantive rules but also in their underlying economic, legal and social-political foundations and their resultant understandings of debtors, creditors, the market and the public order. And fourth, by outlining the different normative orientations of consumer bankruptcy systems, this sociological analysis of the legal regulation of consumer insolvency and debt relief aims to connect consumer bankruptcy research to neighboring fields of study, such as political economy and sociology as well as consumer and social policy research.