This book provides a comparative appraisal of global developments in the area of consumer bankruptcy and overindebtedness.

This essay is inspired by two recent books on comparative consumer bankruptcy: (1) Consumer Bankruptcy in Global Perspective (Oxford, U.K. and Portland, Ore.: Hart Publishing, 2003, Johanna Niemi-Kiesilauml;inen, Iain Ramsay, and William Whitford, editors), and (2) Jacob S. Ziegel, Comparative Consumer Insolvency Regimes - A Canadian Perspective (Oxford, U.K. and Portland, Ore.: Hart Publishing, 2003). After describing the worldwide legislative frenzy in the enactment of consumer bankruptcy laws since 1984, the essay turns to three basic questions. First, the paper asks - should we care about comparative consumer bankruptcy study? That is, is the comparative study of consumer bankruptcy regimes meaningful, useful, or helpful? After expressing a number of caveats, several substantial benefits of comparative bankruptcy scholarship are noted. Second, the article examines what forces are driving the global legislative surge? Here the paper points to strong evidence that the democratisation of consumer credit, stemming from deregulation and improved technology and information, has driven up the amount of consumer credit exponentially, with a correspondingly large increase in default, thus necessitating some sort of legislative response to consumer over-indebtedeness. Finally, the paper asks whether there is a global trend of convergence, whereby legislative relief for over-indebted consumers is moving towards a common set of norms. The paper suggests that while there is some evidence of convergence, the differences still are substantial, predominate, and are likely to - and should - persist.

After a long period of prosperity and steady economic growth, the world's leading economies are now in crisis, and although there will be debate about its origins, the scale and seriousness of the crisis is in no doubt. There is also no doubt that excessive amounts of consumer credit, allied to a weak understanding of how globalised credit markets might react to a crisis, have played a significant part. This book, which is primarily about credit, debt and the trouble they have led to, is written by authors who have specialised in researching into over-indebtedness, that is, situations in which an individual's debt burden has become overwhelming. For these authors the plight of individuals is a primary concern, but the wider issue is how credit is used and how it changes societies. The essays in this volume, addressing topics which are fundamental to our understanding of the current crisis, range widely across the whole sector of consumer finance, including mortgages, 'credit-binges', the regulation of consumer lending, insolvency, repayment plans, debt counselling and much more besides. The conclusions drawn from the book are equally wide-ranging, but above all the lesson learned from these essays is that the financialisation of contemporary life ensures that issues of the appropriate role of credit remain of critical importance in society.

Consumer protection law in the age of globalisation poses new challenges for policy-makers. This book highlights the difficulties of framing regulatory responses to the problem of consumers' access to justice in the new international economy. The growth of international consumer transactions in the wake of technological change and the globalisation of markets suggests that governments can no longer develop consumer protection law in isolation from the international legal arena. Leading scholars consider the broader theme of access to justice from socio-legal, law and economics perspectives. Topics include standard form contracts, the legal challenges posed by mass infections (such as mad-cow disease and CJD), ombudsman schemes, class actions, alternative dispute resolution, consumer bankruptcy, conflict of laws, and cross-border transactions. This book demonstrates that advancing and achieving access to justice for consumers proves to be a challenging, and sometimes elusive, task.

A Debtor World contains a collection of contributions about the societal implications of private debt. The essays comprising this volume are authored by dozens of leading U.S. and international academics who have written about debt or issues related to debt in a wide range of disciplines including law, sociology, psychology, history, economics, and more. The goal of this collection is to explore debt neither as a problem nor a solution but as a phenomenon and to promote the exchange of knowledge to better comprehend why consumers and businesses decide to borrow money. It asks what happens to businesses and consumers under a heavy debt load, and what legal norms and institutions societies need to encourage the efficient use of debt while promoting a greater understanding of the global phenomenon of increased indebtedness and societal dependence.

This volume brings together historians, economists, political scientists, and anthropologists to present a global perspective on the new forms of lending and borrowing that have become a key feature of twentieth-century mass consumer societies, emphasizing comparative and transnational historical perspectives.