11 OCTOBER, 2022: Prof. Chandan Kumar Jha,​from Madden School of Business at Le Moyne College, will lead a seminar  on Municipal Bankruptcies and Crime at 4 pm on October 20, 2022.

The seminar will be held at Classroom P12 on campus.

In his paper, Prof. Jha explains that while the importance of municipal bonds for the provision of public services is well-documented, the consequences of municipal bankruptcies remain understudied. He and his co-authors contribute to this literature by studying the effects of municipal bankruptcies on crime. Using the staggered difference-in-differences approach and agency-level crime data, they find that violent and property crime rates rise after successful (approved by the bankruptcy courts) Chapter 9 bankruptcy filings. The association between successful municipal bankruptcy and crime remains robust to alternative estimation methods, including a novel empirical technique that allows for the treatment effect heterogeneity and dynamics, and several robustness checks and falsification exercises. Their exploratory evidence suggests that the rise in crime rates is due to lower spending on law and order. Their findings highlight the importance of efficient financial management for local government entities and the need for particular attention to law and order in the local jurisdiction going through bankruptcy.