The Bankruptcy Data Project at Harvard provides historical data of the bankruptcy petitions filled by individuals and entities in the Unites States.
This item downloads the number of total Chapter 7 petitions filled by both commercial and noncommercial (the same as individuals and entities) for each month, from January 2006 to present. Individual refers to a natural people (engineers, doctors...), while entity refers to legal entities (companies, partnerships...). The data could be downloaded separately for each group but I have chosen to download the total to get a unique indicator, which is the number of total Chapter 7 petitions filed for each month.
There are several types of bankruptcy (Bankruptcy Filings); Chapter 7 is the most severe and common form of bankruptcy in the United States. It concerns businesses and individuals that are badly in debt and that are unable to pay back their creditors. Chapter 7 is a liquidation bankruptcy, which means that assets of the concerned individual or entity are sold in order to pay the creditors. The rest of the debt is discharged.
NB: In August 2008, the number of Chapter 7 petitions filled was '87988'
This item automatically creates a symbol for this time-series (^BANKRUPTCY_CHAPTER7)
The number of petitions filled saw an increase of 66% in two months in the period from January 2009 to march 2009.
