Can Small Businesses Survive Chapter 11?

A majority of small U.S. businesses attempting to reorganize in bankruptcy fail to successfully do so. Subchapter V of Chapter 11 was introduced in 2020 for firms with less than $7.5 million in liabilities to streamline the process by reducing bankruptcy costs and negotiation frictions, and enabling entrepreneurs to retain their ownership. Employing regression-discontinuity and difference-in-differences designs, we show that many small businesses reorganize under the new procedures that otherwise would have been liquidated. Further, expected creditor recoveries and post-bankruptcy survival rates are at least as high in Subchapter V as in similar traditional small business reorganizations. Our results show that the increased ability to preserve small businesses is not associated with a bias toward continuing unviable firms, and that creditors are not harmed by a shift in bargaining power toward small business owners.