Dr. Alex Huang applies network analysis and natural language processing to a dataset of 6,500 bankruptcy opinions issued between 1982 and 2017. His study traces a doctrinal shift in the relationship between two sets of rules: distributional rules, which determine the priority and payoff of creditors, and operational rules, which aim to preserve or enhance firm value through business operations. Although the U.S. Bankruptcy Code itself has remained largely intact, the relationship between these two types of rules has changed dramatically over the past three decades—shifting from unbundling to bundling. This work reveals a profound evolution in the practice of corporate reorganization.
Past recipients of the III Prize include leading scholars in the field of insolvency law, among them Professor Irit Ronen-Mevorach of Warwick Law School and Professor John Pottow of the University of Michigan.