Discrimination in Bankruptcy Situations

In a bankruptcy situation, not all claimants are affected in the same way. In particular, some depositors may enter into a situation of personal bankruptcy if they lose part of their investments. Events of this kind may lead to a social catastrophe. We propose discrimination among the claimants as a possible solution. A fact considered in the American bankruptcy law (among others) that establishes some discrimination on the claimants, or the Santander Bank that in the Madoff’s case reimbursed only the deposits to its particular customers. Moreover, the necessity of discriminating has already been mentioned in different contexts by Young (1988), Bossert (1995), Thomson (2003) and Pulido et al. (2002, 2007), for instance. In this paper, we take a bankruptcy solution as the reference point. Given this initial allocation, we make transfers from richer to poorer with the purpose of distributing not only the personal incurred losses as evenly as possible but also the transfers in a progressive way. The agents are divided into two groups depending on their personal monetary value (wealth, net-income, GDP or any other characteristic). Then, we impose a set of Axioms that bound the maximal transfer that each net-contributor can make and each net-receiver can obtain. Finally, we define a value discriminant solution, and we characterize it by means of the Lorenz criterion. Endogenous convex combinations between solutions are also considered. Keywords: Bankruptcy, Discrimination, Compensation, Rules JEL classification: C71, D63, D71.

El GEPA, d’una antiga caserna militar a un equipament bibliotecari per a documents de baix ús

A començaments d’aquest segle xxi entre algunes de les biblioteques universitàries de Catalunya va sorgir una necessitat: la manca d’espai i la reconversió de les biblioteques físiques en el nou panorama educatiu. El Consorci de Biblioteques Universitàries de Catalunya (CBUC) va recollir aquesta necessitat i va engegar un projecte amb el mateix esperit cooperatiu de tots els programes i serveis del Consorci. El 2002 es va encarregar un estudi fundacional, el 2003 es va localitzar l’edifici a les antigues casernes militars de Lleida i el 2007 es van iniciar les obres del projecte de rehabilitació. El GEPA (Garantia d’Espai per a la Preservació de l’Accés) és un magatzem cooperatiu per conservar els documents de baix ús, tot garantint-ne la preservació futura i l’accessibilitat immediata quan alguna biblioteca ho necessiti.