Legal vs. economic explanations of the rise in bankruptcies in 19th century France.

Summary This paper aims at giving an explanation of the changes in the number of bankruptcies during the second part of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. We firstly study the evolution of the French insolvency law and then we introduce some regional aspects. We indeed observe that the court of the District of the Seine is more tolerant than the others. however this kind of use of the law will spread in the other courts until the reform in 1889 that creates the judicial liquidation. The special analysis permits us to show that the changes in the law do not explain the total variations of the total amount of bankruptcies. The local practices, the way judicial agents act and the changes in the firms' strategies are also essential in the explanation.