Stéphane Esquerre

Don't feed the zombies Essay on survival of bankrupt firms in French bankrupcty courts

Keywords: JEL-Classification: G33, K22, K40, H73 Bankruptcy, Courts, Judge, Law Enforcement, Interjurisdictional Differentials and Their Effects 1

Don't feed the zombies" is the bottom line argument to condemn the risk in pro-continuation bankruptcy systems, promoting survival of non-viable businesses. Feeding this firms may prevent reallocation of capital from distressed firms to healthy ones. It may also destabilize bargaining power between debtors and creditors, reinforcing the former. Here we want to test the truth of this argument by looking at the French reform of the commercial jurisdiction in 2011. The procontinuation bias is modeled looking at the proportion of firms that the court decides to reorganize despite them not having enough assets to cover all the legal bankruptcy costs. Theses firms are considered zombie firms. We examine whether jurisdictions differ in their decisions after a change of the judicial maps. Some courts may have been absorbed or may have absorbed others while some remain unaffected. We are able to pin down structural motivations for pro-continuation bias with no other legal changes and within a single country. After a court is absorbed, this bias drops significantly. Yet the overall survival rate of reorganized firms remains the same. These results show how proximity to the parties may help judges take decisions despite counter-intuitive negative financial information. But theses rulings are made with no regard to the firm's creditors. Since it is only the smaller courts that are absorbed by larger ones, the paper also gives hindsight on the effect of court's size on bankruptcy.

Introduction

We examine increases in commercial court's size and distance to firms following the reform of the French judiciary map. We want to deepen our understanding of size effect and pro-continuation bias between courts within a country. The reform helps us to tackle these effects with no major changes of the bankruptcy law. Only small courts are absorbed by larger ones while some remain unchanged. Theses changes imply that both the courts absorbing and being absorbed change their organisation, and possibly their bankruptcy policy. We find the reform has an impact on their decisions towards bankruptcy, it also reduces our proxy for continuation bias in these affected courts but there is no major changes in the overall survival rates of bankrupt firms.

Many European countries have attempted to revamp their judicial map.

The French Court of Auditors reports that half of the members of the Council of Europe has achieved or undergone similar reforms since 20081 . Most of them were of civil law tradition. Their reform revolves around a new ideological set-up. The main goal was to provide a modernized framework for the country's legal system. It implies a new "judicial management" inside the Courts (see [START_REF] Schoenaers | Les juges du travail et le nouveau management judiciaire: quelles transformations dans l'organisation de la profession?[END_REF].

In France, the reform was concerned with the courts of first instance, appeal courts and the commercial courts. A fourth of the 1,190 jurisdictions were suppressed between December 2008 and January 2011. 78 of the 225 commercial Courts from the 1807 Commercial code were suppressed and 6 were created. Offices and human resources from each type of jurisdictions are independent for their daily tasks. We must not expect spillover effects from changes from one kind of jurisdiction to another. Among these three reforms, the reform of the commercial jurisdiction map is the only one deemed successful 2 . Lengthy previous discussions between the State and the representative union of the commercial courts 3 explains its success. It thus proves a particularly useful set-up to understand the impact of changes in court's size. We can rule out other extraneous factors that would affect the decisions. We assume that there was no conflict between local judges during the reform. Conflicts may hamper the rulings or create concerns for firms which would have delayed their filings.

The reform makes smaller courts absorbed by (slightly) larger ones. In small courts, access to private information from firms should be easier. Since bankruptcy judges are elected within the jurisdiction among entrepreneurs, the closer the courts are to the firms, the more information they should be able to get from the other local entrepreneurs. At the same time, their decision may be all the more biased because of this proximity, whereas further judges may be able to be less biased towards entrepreneurs. Distance means bigger courts and increases the probability that judges are more experienced, thanks to more cases. This should increase efficiency in ruling [START_REF] Chappe | The impact of the number of courts on the demand for trials[END_REF]Iverson et al., 2019). Distance can generate cost for firms, because of actual distance or because of a reduced acquaintance with the judges. Distance thus can lead to delay in reaching the court, the further the firms are, although it is crucial to prevent delays in financial distress (see for example [START_REF] Blazy | Employment preservation vs. creditors' repayment under bankruptcy law: the french dilemma?[END_REF] .

We have access to firm-level data within most jurisdictions from 2006 to 2013. We look at each month rulings from courts and we can check differences in the decisions after the reform. The French reform is particularly interesting to study because we can explore a variety of situations. More than one third of the jurisdictions remain unchanged and serve as controls.

There are three other types of situation : the smaller courts being absorbed by larger ones ; larger courts absorbing smaller ones; and 6 Courts being created. The latter are now independent commercial courts rather than commercial chamber in civil courts. We can thus examine three different kinds of treatments. We use a difference-in-difference approach to check the effect of the reform for each type of courts.

We expect smaller courts that are absorbed to be more lenient with firms either because of private information or local interest. We test leniency by checking the probability that courts let firms attempt reorganization (Redressement Judiciaire) rather than direct Liquidation Judiciaire despite the firms having not enough assets to cover the bankruptcy process4 . We also test how much letting these firms attempting reorganization is rational by looking at their survival rate and testing their survival one year after the decision to reorganize.

ting the number of courts, for victims of accidents. [START_REF] Chappe | The impact of the number of courts on the demand for trials[END_REF] consider the trade-off between reducing the delays in court through a more efficient management versus a decreased access to justice because of the courts' concentration. They show that distance can decrease the demand for courts, even if less courts can increase the amount of care. Other institutional economics papers question the underlining arguments that sustain such reform. In particular [START_REF] Ficet | Trajectoires de réforme de la carte judiciaire et managérialisation de l'État. analyse comparée des politiques de territorialisation de la justice en france et en belgique[END_REF][START_REF] Schoenaers | Les juges du travail et le nouveau management judiciaire: quelles transformations dans l'organisation de la profession?[END_REF] question the rise of a new judicial management based on economic efficiency and provide a theoretical framework to undergo such reforms. Last sociological papers such as [START_REF] Vauchez | La justice face à ses réformateurs (1980-2006): entreprises de modernisation et logiques de résistance[END_REF] have provided insights into the political bargaining that made the reform emerge and its limits compared to the preliminary proposition in the 1998 report. This paper will provide answer to two questions. First, we assess whether or not changing the size and distance to courts has some effect on the rulings, and then, on the consequences of these changes. Only the smallest courts, which are the closest to the firms, are absorbed by average ones and their small size supposedly makes them unable to ensure "equality in judicial treatment"5 . We look for an unbiased measure to compare decisions between courts. We thus use a proxy for pro-continuation bias by looking at the attempts of reorganization for firms that do not have enough assets to covert the court's fees. This paper also tackles the questions of reducing the number of courts in favour of larger ones. We discuss how this reduction impacts judicial decisions and their efficiency, measured as the survival of bankrupt firms after they have filed. The reform shuts down the smallest courts and creates a few big enough ones. We can compare small courts absorbed by larger ones, those that are created, and compare with those that are unaffected. This issue is all the more important that similar reforms are being planned in many countries. In France the process is still under completion. Some Courts do not achieve the minimal level of cases a year6 . Thus the reform may be pursued in the years to come7 .

We can follow the reform and the resulting changes in courts on two levels. We first study how the reform modifies the screening between firms according to their chances of attempting reorganization, and thus starting an observation period under the authority of the court. We also challenge the quality of this decision. We model the time to failure for these attempted reorganization. We also look at the chances that a reorganization plan is settled within the 12 months after the filing, in the observation period.

We found that the attempted reorganization rates increase after the reform for the new courts. Our result is consistent with Esquerré, 2017. This paper compares organisation of commercial courts with commercial chamber in civil courts. The most interesting result is the drop in attempted reorganization rates for 'zombie' firms, in the absorbing and absorbed courts. There is a size threshold above which rulings change for firms in economic distress.

Yet, when we look at the specific survival of this firm, or their chances to have a reorganization plan, both of these outcomes remains constant after the reform. We can infer the following. The pro-continuation bias towards zombie firms is apparently not harmful towards the economy. Their survival is unaffected. Yet such rulings imply that judges let zombie firms pursue their business. And this is despite their economic conditions at filing. This means that creditors are forced to forfeit part of their claims. Larger courts, after the reform, choose to protect more the creditors than the firms. We lack information to know how theses changes happened. Last, this paper gives some hindsight on how (see [START_REF] Sullivan | The persistence of local legal culture: Twenty years of evidence from the federal bankruptcy courts[END_REF] can take shape and be modified.

The rest of the paper proceeds as follows. Section II gives more background about the reform. Section III provides information on the data and the building of the judicial maps before and after the reform. Section IV describes our empirical strategy. Section V analyses the impact of the reform on the decision by the Court to reorganize, on the survival of reorganized firms and on their chances for an agreement to be reached upon a reorganization plan. Section VI concludes.

Reforming the commercial jurisdictions

Context

Ironically, the specific reform of the judicial map was not considered the main reform of commercial justice to be accomplished at the time. It ended up as a compromise between the government and the bankruptcy judges. Since 1974 the main wish for reform was to increase the role of professional judges in commercial courts, inspired by the échevinage structure from Alsace-Moselle8 . The reform of the commercial jurisdictions originates from the 1998 parliamentary report [START_REF] Montebourg | Tribunaux de commerce , une justice en faillite[END_REF]. which was considered as controversial because it insisted on the change in status of the bankruptcy judges. The subject was dropped when the reform was finally decided in 2007 and only the reform of the judicial map remained.

Three main reasons can justify this reform. First there was a need to realign the maps of the commercial and civil jurisdictions. The primary objective was to simplify the work of the Bench. Second there was a need to preserve collegiality among all Courts. In too small courts, only one judge did the rulings. Collegiality demands that at least three judges are present in each chamber. Last collusion issues were brought up since the beginning of the 90's. The success of the polemics initiated by [START_REF] Gaudino | La mafia des tribunaux de commerce[END_REF] is the reason the reform was rushed.

In the late 90's, the priority is to revamp the status of bankruptcy judges.

It appears as the main motivation behind the 1998 parliamentary report.

But it is also a never-ending debate. The opposition of the judges and their union end in demonstrations. Yet the parliamentary discussions only lead to relative anecdotal changes in their status. They adopt three non coercive measures: the drafting of a charter of conduct, the selection of the candidates in 2002, and an improvement of in their training as magistrate.

When reforming the judicial map, the members of the Parliament considered three distinct dimensions. First there was the need to ensure a better matching between the civil and commercial jurisdictions. The civil judicial map was about to be reorganized at the time, thus the need for alternative indicators to lead this reform. Second a quantitative dimension (e.g. number of cases) was considered and last, a qualitative dimension (e.g. characteristics of the area) was proposed. In the actual reform, only the quantitative one remains, i.e. Courts should be maintained only if they reach 400 cases a year. Even if it was considered a useful decision criteria, a 2015 report by the French Court of Auditors show that some Courts do not reach the threshold and would need for the reform to be pursued.

Success of the reform

As mentioned above, the reform is the result of the trade-off between proximity versus efficiency. The wish for proximity derives from the needs for an easy access to Courts and for a strong legitimacy given to being close to persons subjected to the law. The closer the judges are to the firms, the more information they should be able to collect. Courts also represent an important symbol of power for local authorities. Decisions to suppress a commercial courts were fiercely opposed by local representatives9 .

Increasing the distance from Courts to firms has its own benefits. Since the bankruptcy judges are elected among local professionals, the smaller the jurisdiction, the higher the risk of a collusion. It also helps in decreasing the variation that are brought by local legal cultures, i.e. possible inequity of judgements. As often mentioned in the law and economics literature, courts tend to have specific norms of judgements which are obviously leveled by the concentration of courts. Also, while proximity gives more legitimacy to the judge as a close democratic power, distance strengthens the symbolic power of the judges and thus the enforcement of their decision.

It is the efficiency criteria that ultimately prevailed10 . Indeed the decision to favour quantitative over qualitative threshold in order to maintain a jurisdiction can only affect the smaller ones despite local pressure in their support. The critical size of the court was judged the most fundamental criteria since the "judicial map [at the time] does not allow equality in judicial treatment; it does not ensure minimal warranties on the quality of the justice" [START_REF] Montebourg | Tribunaux de commerce , une justice en faillite[END_REF]. As shown by our data in figure 1, the reform chooses to help the smallest courts reaching a size threshold.

Despite the opposition of local power, the reform was well-received by the most of the bankruptcy courts, commercial chambers and the union of the bankruptcy judges. [START_REF] Vauchez | La justice face à ses réformateurs (1980-2006): entreprises de modernisation et logiques de résistance[END_REF] explain how the changes in the judicial map was far more feared than any attempt to bring professional judges next to the elected ones in the bankruptcy courts. This trade-off is in the reform. It ensures that the bankruptcy courts cooperated with Courts may have judged their firms in different ways according to the type of firms that suffer from the crisis and the scope of the crisis in their jurisdiction. Authors have already shown business -and age-specific effects of the financial crisis on French firms [START_REF] Fougère | Quel a été l'impact de la crise de 2008 sur la défaillance des entreprises?[END_REF]. A simple time dummy may confound the crisis adjustment in the court behaviour and the We needed an unique criterion which could sum up the continuation bias of each court. It needed to be independent of the evolution of the financial crisis. We decided to pin down the more zombie-like firms, i.e. the firms that appear clearly in economic distress when filing. To do so, we use a legal criteria, "insufficiency of assets", defined as a shortage of available assets relative to the "payable" liabilities. Since the definition of "payable" liability is confusing and has been shown to vary depending on the judge.

We restrict it to a conservative definition, inspired by the German law :

the judicial fees that are due to the Court and the judicial representative 11 .

Actually in Germany, a bankrupt firm that cannot pay these fees is not even allowed to proceed towards a reorganization. This also shows which amount of bargaining power French judges hold in the decisions.

Empirical models

We follow the rulings made by Courts, after the reform, with information of their jurisdiction. We know if the firms that reside in a certain jurisdiction were in another Court's jurisdiction before the reform, and in which kind of Court (absorbed, absorbing, new, same). We have information on firms filing for bankruptcy and on the subsequent decisions made by Courts.

Filing for bankruptcy can be asked, with an act of referral ("acte de saisine"), by both creditors and debtors if the firm is insolvent : Redressement 11 The calculation are explained in the Commercial Codex (Article R663 ).

Judiciaire or Liquidation Judiciaire. Legally when the creditors ask the court for filing, they can ask for a specific proceeding or for both of them to be opened. They generally ask for both so that the judges can decide which they want to open based upon available information such as the financial balance sheet of the firm. The court follows the choice of the debtor when she is asking the filing for bankruptcy. Until 2011, the court could also ask themselves for a firm to file for bankruptcy. Now they would contact and have an interview with the firm's owners.

We lack statistics on the proportion of askings between creditors and debtors. Guillonneau, Haehl, and Munoz Perez, 2013 use data from the French répertoire général civil12 from 2006 to 2012, where the nature of the author asking for the filing should be indicated, but is often missing (in 12.9% of the cases). Overall, most bankruptcy filings are asked by the debtor (52.9%) with less than a third being asked by the creditors (29.1%).

But these figures changes depending on the type of the proceeding: only 36.7% of the filings for Redressement judiciaire are asked by debtors (68.5% of Liquidation Judiciaire); while 44,8% are asked by creditors (14.4% of Liquidation Judiciaire). Last, courts always play a part in the decision on the proceeding. The commercial courts are responsible in monitoring and preventing bankruptcy over their jurisdiction. Even when the asking is done by the debtor, most of the firm's owners would have had a discussion with the court beforehand if they were not sure they can file for reorganization.

After filing, firms can be directly liquidated or can attempt a reorganization. In the latter case, they enter an observation period and if the bargainings on the reimbursement plan are successful, a reorganization plan is agreed upon. Otherwise, the firm can be sold13 or liquidated. We can also track the time when the reorganization fails after it was initiated. Three outcomes can be studied: the decision to reorganize the firm, the likelihood of the reorganization plan once the reorganization has started and the chances of survival for reorganized firms.

Our data allow us to use a panel model. We consider each 2009 court as the individual of interest. We use this model on the decision to let the firm attempting reorganization versus direct liquidation. We also model the chances of a reorganization plan within a year after filing with this framework. We first test our model with a dummy for the reform, then with quarters and years as fixed effects and last with a geographical area, Employment zone14 .

We want to study the following linear latent model where only

y ij = 1 (y * ij >0
) is observed, where j designs commercial court, i the bankrupt firms and x stands mainly for the firm's characteristics :

y * ij = x ij β + z ij γ + ij z ij =1 ContinuationBias * 1 Court sT ype * 1 Ref orm + 1 Court sT ype * 1 Ref orm + 1 ContinuationBias * 1 Court sT ype + 1 ContinuationBias * 1 Ref orm + 1 ContinuationBias + 1 Court sT ype + 1 Ref orm
Our model assumes that each court is affected in a similar way, except for their type. Under this assumption, two absorbing courts should be affected by the reform in a similar fashion. Yet we cannot use fixed effect for courts since we would not be able to identify the effect of the type of the court on the outcome. The parametrisation of the effect of each Court needs some strong assumptions on its functional form. To check the robustness of our results, we had rather test an alternative model. We choose to use the INSEE15 Employment zone as a fixed effect. Our idea is to check for situations where an Employment zone (EZ) lies on two different commercial jurisdictions. Using such a model, we can infer the effect of the reform controlling for the local environments for two firms that reside in a same EZ and not only the characteristics of the court and the firm. By definition, an Employment zone has a local consistency and we can assume that the economic evolutions are roughly the same in the area. We can make sure to reduce some heterogeneity among jurisdictions that could have explained differences in their judgements.

We want to use similar structures in order to check the chances of survival. We use at the same time a logistic model to explore the chances of a reorganization plan and survival analysis to check the survival rate after the filing and after a plan was agreed upon. The only available estimation for the latter on our data asks for a parametric assumption of the hazard ratio, h 0 (t). We need to assume that the effect of time on survival is set in a deterministic way, using a probability distribution set a priori, rather than non-parametrically like in a Cox model. Looking at the plot of the hazard ratio that we compute from the data (see figure 3), we can assume that a log-logistic parametrisation is appropriate.

We provide two additional tests to check our previous results. The first one challenges the distance to court. We ask whether the effect is only due to changes in distance. As mentioned during the introduction, the relative proximity/distance relationship to the judges may explain changes in ruling.

If so, all firms in the jurisdiction would not be affected by the reform. Only those at the periphery would be judged differently after the reform. We also add a placebo test. To do so, we include the placebo reform six months before the real reform. It is the simplest placebo, we only change this date and check whether we still see an impact of the reform. 4 Data and descriptive statistics

Sources and data selection

Data on bankruptcies can be found in many legal sources varying from legal advertisements in newspapers to official publications in the Bodacc. Altares-D&B allowed us to put into use all these various sources to ensure we do not lack some events after a firm has filed for bankruptcy. We can infer all the judicial process from the filing to the end of the bankruptcy. The end of the bankruptcy process may occur either be because of a shut-down of the firm resulting from a lack of assets or due to the reimbursement of its creditors.

Most of the reorganization plan are set for 10 years so that we can not easily track the end of bankruptcy. This is why we mostly use other information.

We either look at the occurrence of a reorganization plan once the court has let the firm attempt reorganization or to a failure to reimburse. In case of failure, the bankrupt firm generally starts a liquidation proceeding.

The main drawback in our source is the lack of information on the level of debts, the identity of the creditors or even the debt collection rate. We must focus on other outcomes to determine the changes which occurred in the Courts' decision after the reform. First we study the Court's decisions to reorganize the firm or not, and we check how it was affected by a possible change in the jurisdiction. Then we study the level of type-2 errors, i.e. failures in a judicial reorganization. We can infer two outcomes : the chances for a firm to conclude a reorganization plan with its creditors which is published in official publications, and the ending of the proceeding 16 . As mentioned above, the length of the reorganization plan forces us to look at failure and thus we model the process as a survival process.

We select only two out the three available bankruptcy proceedings in France, Redressement judiciaire and Liquidation judiciaire. We thus rule out the firms that file for a Sauvegarde for three reasons. First Redressement judiciaire and Liquidation judiciaire demand both the same conditions for filing 17 which make them easier to compare. Second, the Sauvegarde proceeding was introduced in 2006 that is the beginning of our period of interest. As such its implementation was quite new and may be heterogeneous depending on the jurisdictions. Last, most of all it remains a rare occurrence : less than 1% of all bankruptcies each year file for it. It needs a lot of anticipation from the managers, who must look for the Court before the firm becomes insolvent. Also they can choose less judicial and more preventive legal proceedings in France. French bankruptcy law provides two mutual agreement proceedings (mandat ad hoc and conciliation). In this case bargaining be- 16 We can infer that the reorganization has failed with published events : either the reorganization was forcefully changed into a filing for liquidation ; or the proceeding was closed.

17 The firm must have ceased its payments for less than 45 days 13 tween the firm and its creditors is overlooked by a bankruptcy judge and the creditors have incentives to accept (changes in lender's prior claim). Moreover it provides an agreement with no requirement for publicity. Experts suggest that managers use Sauvegarde as a threat to their creditors. Like in Redressement judiciaire, judges can cram down their decision to enact a reorganization plan.

Our data on the courts come from the Ministère de la Justice. We infer the jurisdictions before and after the reform based on the firm's headquarter location, which links each city to its jurisdiction. We hypothesize that the fusion of the two courts (Lille and Roubaix) to create a single commercial court at the beginning of 2013 would not affect our study. We also choose to consider the firm's town rather than its exact address. We then compute the distance between the firm's town and the town of the Commercial court. This helps us distinguish between distance and reorganization effect. We compute the number of filings for bankruptcies over the sliding three months. This allows us to take into account the size of the courts.

We build our controls on two main sources of information. We use balance sheet for financial information. The first one is available only for about a third of all French businesses, but its availability increases with the size of the firm. More than half of bankrupt firms with at least one employee have available financial information. This increases to 80% for the firms with more than 50 employees18 . These figures mitigates the selection bias we face.

We are less concerned with the rulings for firms with no employees. Their reorganization or liquidation has a smaller impact on the local economy. In 2014, their median turnover was around 40 thousands Euros19 .

Among all available financial information, we keep three size ratios that play different roles: size of assets, sales and number of employees, all at the logarithm to prevent dispersion issues. The size of assets gives information on the weight of the firm. A large firm in terms of assets is more or less in bankruptcy risk. It depends on the structure of its liabilities. It's the weight of debt that determines the risk of bankruptcy. We compute the fixed assets coverage ratio: fixed assets divided by current liabilities which is a risk measurement. It evaluates a company's ability to repay its debt obligations by selling its assets. Another size ratio is its sales. It gives information on the firm's business level. Sales need to be profitable regarding the firm's expenses. We compute a profitability ratio : EBITDA over Sales. Last we use the number of employees which is at the same time a size criterion ; and a variable looked upon by courts.

We use financial information to build our Assets shortfall dummy. Following the French commercial law 20 we compute the judicial fees of the proceeding. The fees cover for the filing and the compensation of the person in charge of the judicial proceeding. An administrateur when the firm files for a Redressement judiciaire and an liquidateur for Liquidation judiciaire.

They are nominated by the court. The fees depend on the firm's size since the job becomes more complicated as the firm's size increases. We compare these fees to the firm's realisable assets, the more fungible assets (stocks and cash) and its fixed assets.

We also use the firm's business profile collected by the French census institute 21 . This gives information about its age, its business sector and its legal form. liquidation rate at filing over 80 % with more than 1,000 bankruptcies each year (and more than 3,600 for Paris). It is not a problem for estimating the effect of the reform since the difference-in-difference estimators asks for the different types of courts to have a common trend, i.e. to be affected in a similar way by the reform. It has no need for the courts to have similar attempted reorganization rates between the treated (the absorbing, absorbed and new ones) and the controls (the unaffected ones).

Descriptive statistics

These differences can also be seen in the general economic environment in each type of court. The business sectors in the unaffected type of court and the ones in the new courts are the more polar cases. Three of them have more than 3 p.p. discrepancies: the manufacturing industries (13% vs 19 %), the wholesale-retail one (29 % vs. 26 %) and the informationcommunication (5 % vs 2 %). The two other types of courts (absorbed and absorbing) are always in the middle range and close to each other. The estimations need business sector to be controlled for. We assume that the changes they imply for firms and the rulings by judges are not heterogeneous among the various jurisdictions. This assumption looks strong but cannot be overcome to achieve convergence of estimators.

Nonetheless it is reassuring to see that both the courts that are absorbed and those that are absorbing are quite similar, as shown in figure 2. Their rulings are consistent with very close rates. There is only one percentage point of discrepancy between their reorganization, failure rates and the chances to do a reorganization plan. On an aggregate level, we can infer that their judgement styles resemble each others. There are two main discrepancies on the aggregate type of courts' characteristics. There is a gap in the distance between the courts and the firms and the size of the courts. The size of each court is proxied by the number of bankruptcies over the last quarter before the filing. This follows up from the reform's criteria. As of 2009, the firm residing in absorbed jurisdiction may now be further to court. It depends on a new absorbing Commercial court. We control for the changes in distance in our estimations. We do so as a simple control variable. We also test its specific effect on a robustness check estimation. The reform main goal is to reduce the number of courts. The suppression of some courts depends on their smaller size as demonstrated in [START_REF] Vauchez | La justice face à ses réformateurs (1980-2006): entreprises de modernisation et logiques de résistance[END_REF] Changes in the number of bankruptcy cases can affect the decisions of judges. The workload's effect is tackled for example in [START_REF] Iverson | Get in Line: Chapter 11 Restructuring in Crowded Bankruptcy Courts[END_REF]. We control for this with our quarterly size variable.

The various size of each court is a historical given. It does not hinder similarities between the firms that file for bankruptcy. Table 2 shows that they have close financial information. The mean profitability is the same among all types of courts (-10%) and the standard deviation is also narrow, ranging from 23% to 28%. This statement holds for almost all the financial information we test in our model. On average, the distribution of size of the firms by type of courts is quite similar (sales and employees) as much as their age. The differences in rulings and their effect on the survival of the firms depend less on the heterogeneity in firms within jurisdiction than the on the heterogeneity among jurisdictions. Our conclusions can rest on the characteristics we want to test, the courts'.

Concerns over legal forms depend on limited responsibility of the shareholders. This is why we create two single groups for limited liability companies (LLC, 90% of the overall bankrupt firms) and simplified LLC (less than 10 %). The proportion of LLC remains the same during the reform. It is the ratio between simplified LLC and other legal forms. The other legal forms imply an increased personal risk for the shareholders during bankruptcy.

Their share decreases by 2 p.p, implying an increase in firm filings with less incentives to reorganize.

5 Econometric analysis

Impact of the reform on the decision to reorganize

We first look at the decision to let firms attempting reorganize versus direct liquidation (see Table 3). We start with court characteristics that should not depend on the organisation of courts after the reform, distance to courts and past bankruptcies. We use distance to courts as proxy for access to private information on firms and it plays a marginal negative effect (less than 2%) on the chances of attempted reorganization. The effect becomes non-significant in the model with Employment Zone as fixed effects. A possible explanation of the effect of the distance comes more from heterogeneity within the jurisdiction. Among firms in a same Employment zone, distance and possible access to court do not play such a discriminating role to screen firms according to this result. The increase in past bankruptcies has a negative effect on attempted reorganization (-10%) in the two first models. This is in line with most papers on the workload effect on judgment : the more the cases, the more the court has to choose simpler solutions such as the liquidation of the firm (see [START_REF] Iverson | Get in Line: Chapter 11 Restructuring in Crowded Bankruptcy Courts[END_REF]. The effect becomes non significant when we take Employment zone into account. Past bankruptcies must have a similar affect across the jurisdiction so that the coefficient is no longer significant in this model.

Before the reform, the coefficients of the types of courts are similar for the three models. These result are thus consistent when we control for the characteristics of the firms, the courts but also despite that we control our results with geographical disparities in our third model using EZ as fixed effect. Relative to the unaffected courts, absorbing and absorbed courts show both higher level of attempted reorganization (between +20% and +31% for the former ; 10% to 20% for the latter). The courts that are chosen to absorb others or that are absorbed are smaller courts than the unaffected ones in 2009 (see figure 1). The correlation between size of courts and the type of decision the court makes a good explanation for these differences in rulings with unaffected courts.

The new courts are different since they are mixed commercial chamber until 2009, with professional judge presiding the chamber and not only lay judges forming the court. We find they have odd ratio lower than one in the three models, the coefficient even becomes significant and very small in the third model when we take into account the heterogeneity among courts.

This result is in line with [START_REF] Esquerré | Court structure and legal efficiency, the case of french échevinage in bankruptcy courts[END_REF] where he shows that mixed courts, with both lay and professional judges, generally liquidates more easily firms filing for bankruptcy than lay courts. After the reform, only new courts display significant changes in their decisions. The chances to reorganize are increased two-fold (+90% to 108%). This result is also expected with the new organisation of these courts, since mixed courts are replaced by lay courts.

Assets shortfall is a dummy variable which indicates when the assets of the firm are not enough to cover the judicial fees. We consider it as an indicator for continuation bias since these firms are allowed by the court to attempt reorganization rather than being liquidated despite their financial situation. Its effect is strongly negative and significant on the probability to file for a Redressement judiciaire the firm before the reform (-17.4% to -24.5%).

In the first model with no year fixed effect, we can infer the overall effect of the reform. The odd ratio is significantly positive (+7%) which is probably explained by the ongoing of the 2007 financial crisis. France was more severely hit after 200922 and commercial courts may have been more incline to promote reorganisation to let firms time to attempt a reorganization during the observation period rather than being directly liquidated. In line with this argument, the effect of assets shortfall in unaffected courts, our proxy for continuation bias, becomes positive and significant after the reform (+30.3 % to 32.4 %). Unaffected courts may have decided to be more lax over bankrupt firms than in the 2006-2009 period. Courts may have been more

inclined to give some delays to the bankrupt firms, even with low amount of assets. Moreover, as the crisis persisted, the distinction between due and payable liabilities should have become more arbitrary.

Examining the continuation bias depending on the type of courts before the reform, the coefficients show that absorbing courts absorbed courts, the effect is also large (between +30.4% to 47.5%) but is not significant for the last model. The magnitude for this effect is vast for the new courts before the reform, over 300% for the three models. The coefficients are significant or close the 10% threshold in the third model Relative to unaffected courts, the new courts show a vast drop in the reorganization of these firms (more than -70%). The coefficients are strictly above the significance threshold with a p-value between +10.2% and 13.1%.

Courts decide to let more firms file a Redressement judiciaire but this decision is concerned by the ability to pay at least the judicial fees. For absorbed and absorbing, the reform of their organization leads to similar drops in continuation bias. But the magnitude is larger for absorbed courts (-38.5% to -41.7%) than for absorbing courts (-33.1% to 35.1%).

Impact of the reform on the success of reorganization

We first check whether we have different probability of reorganisation plan depending on the types of courts after the reform (results in Table 4). Let us recall that courts can cram-down reorganisation plan onto creditors. If our proxy for continuation bias, assets shortfall, would indicate partial rulings by the pre-reform courts, we may also find this pro continuation bias confirmed in the agreement on a reorganization plan. On the contrary, the results displayed in Table 3 may be driven by an arbitrage between letting the firm attempt the Redressement judiciaire and agreement over a reorganization plan.

Most of our reported coefficients are not significant except for the type of courts before the reform, the number of cases and distance, and the effect of the reform on new courts and on continuation bias. The effect of the number of cases is the same than in the previous table. The overload of cases tend to decrease the chances of reorganisation (ranging from -13.7%

to -10.3%). Distance has a positive effect on the reorganisation firms, which is counterintuitive. We estimate that distance is a good proxy for informal knowledge between the firm and the judge, so we may have expected it leads to better chances for reorganisation. It may actually be a proxy for acquaintance with the firm. In this case, the closer the firm, the more chances it has to attempt reorganization relative to further firms, but the "closer" firms are nonetheless not allowed to be reorganized relative to further firms.

We find that the chances to have a reorganization plan are negatively correlated to the chances to attempt a reorganization. For example, absorbing courts give strong chances of filing for reorganization before the reform.

At the same time, the chances of the reorganization plan were below those of unaffected courts (-13.9% to -19.6%). Assets shortfall does not have a significant impact on the probability of a plan, for the absorbing and absorbed courts. We have found in our previous table that after the reform, unaffected courts tend to let more zombie firms attempting reorganization.

We can assess this leads to less chance of reorganization (-32.3% to -32% for the two first models).

The sole exception in our results concern the new courts. Before the reform, they display a negative relation to the probability of attempting a reorganization and to the agreement upon a plan. We see that after the reform, the coefficient associated to New court are both vastly positive for both of these situations. They may be a rattrapage effect for the new firm that file for bankruptcy but also for the firm that are in an observation period after the reform.

Robustness checks

We have two set of robustness checks of our results. We first wonder if our results are mostly driven by a distance effect and not a change in the organization of the court. To do so, we replace the type of courts by their distance to the firm after the reform. Our results are reported in Table 7. It

shows that there is no significant effect of the distance after the reform, for all the firms attempting a Redressement judiciaire, but also for those with assets shortfall. It ensures that our effect is the consequence of the changes within courts.

We want to check the robustness of our result by simulating a placebo reform. We change the date of the reform to 6 months before the actual reform, in June 2008. This test would tell us if our results are explained by another structural motive than the changes of the size of courts. We display the results in Table 8 and we find no similar effect of the reform for absorbed and absorbing court, neither in general or on their continuation bias.

Conclusion

The paper concludes with strong results over the impact of the 2009 reform and mostly over the chance of size of courts. Smaller courts with only lay judges show continuation bias before 2009 and this bias is reduced after their reorganization in larger courts. The size of the courts plays an important role in their decisions and can reduce pro-continuation bias which may be allowed by the proximity to the firms. Further study should try to understand how the reform has been seen inside the courts and the processes that lead to new rulings.

Nonetheless, this pro-continuation bias towards zombie firms has no consequence on the survival of the firm. The acquaintance effect does not preclude the court to screen efficiently according to the viability of the firms.

These decisions are in line with the spirit of the French law to maintain activity before the reimbursement of the creditors. This also means that creditors are forced to forfeit part of their claims before the reform.

We also find that larger courts, after the reform, choose to protect more the creditors than the firms. We lack information to know how theses changes happened but we assume that they may be linked with the French crisis, after the 2007 subprime crisis, which hit France starting 2009.

This paper displays the same findings than in Esquerré, 2017 concerning the impact of mixed courts versus lay courts. The changes in the composition of the court after the reform for our New courts lead to an increase in the attempts of reorganization, but also, in this case, in the probability of reorganisation. We consider this effect as the result of rattrapage phenomenon for firms that may have filed before the new organization of the court.

Last, our results show how the local legal culture in each court may evolve with a reform on the organisation of the court itself. This reinforces the need to take into account the court's orientation when changing the law (see [START_REF] Sullivan | The persistence of local legal culture: Twenty years of evidence from the federal bankruptcy courts[END_REF] but also our results show different leverages than adjusting the law, in order to change the rulings. This table provides the results for the three models: a dummy for the reform; quarters as time fixed effect (FE); adding employment zones (ZE) as fixed effects. We add several controls, described in Table 1, business activity and legal form and financial ratios.

( This table provides the results for the three models: a dummy for the reform; quarters as time fixed effect (FE); adding employment zones (ZE) as fixed effects. We add several controls, described in Table 1, business activity and legal form and financial ratios.

( This table provides the results for the three models: a dummy for the reform; quarters as time fixed effect (FE); adding employment zones (ZE) as fixed effects. We add several controls, described in Table 1, business activity and legal form and financial ratios.

( This table provides the results for the three models: a dummy for the reform ; quarters as time fixed effect (FE) ; quarters and employment zones (ZE) as fixed effects. We add the same controls as those described in Table 1, business activity and legal form and financial ratios. We add distance as an interaction term. We do not provide the coefficients for the fixed effect dummies and the control variables.

( This table provides the results for the three models: a dummy for the reform; quarters as time fixed effect (FE); adding employment zones (ZE) as fixed effects. We add several controls, described in Table 1, business activity and legal form and financial ratios. We replace the reform by a placebo date, one year before the real one.

(

Figure 1 -

 1 Figure 1 -Average number of bankruptcies each year by type of courts (Source : author's computation)

Figure 2 -

 2 Figure 2 -Number of bankruptcies per year from 1996 to 2015 (Source : Altares-D&B)

Figure 3 -

 3 Figure 3 -Hazard ratio plotted for the firm in a reorganization process (before and after the reform)

Figure 1

 1 Figure1shows that the attempted reorganization rate increased after the reform. Yet, the failure rate dropped by 11 percentage points to 83 % after the reform. It is obviously due to the period we consider. Between 2006 and 2009, we were in the wake of the 2007 financial crisis. This raises the need to add a time effect in our model. It helps taking into account the evolution of the economic environment during the period under study. Let us also note that the rate of reorganization plan remains the same before and after the reform. The firms that file for bankruptcy are indeed different but the screening by courts seems to be unaffected.These changes may also be linked to the 3 percentage points decrease of the bankruptcy that are judged by the unaffected courts before and after the reform. Indeed figure2shows that the attempted reorganization rate for theses courts is smaller than for the others. Actually the maps of the reform show that the courts that do not change of jurisdiction are also some of the biggest commercial courts in France like Paris, Bobigny, Lyon. As shown by Guillonneau, Haehl, and Munoz Perez, 2013 these three courts have a 20 Décret no 85-1390 du 27 décembre 1985 21 INSEE

Figure 5 -

 5 Figure 5 -Bankruptcy courts after the reform (Source : Ministère de la Justice)

Table 1 -

 1 Summary statistics for all observations at risk

		Before reform After reform
		0		1
		mean	sd	mean	sd
	Attempted reorganization	0.43	0.49	0.46	0.50
	Plan	0.15	0.36	0.15	0.36
	Failure	0.94	0.24	0.83	0.37
	Same	0.60	0.49	0.57	0.50
	Absorbing	0.27	0.45	0.29	0.46
	Absorbed	0.11	0.31	0.12	0.33
	New	0.01	0.11	0.01	0.12
	Assets shortfall	0.07	0.26	0.06	0.24
	Ln(1+distance)	7.91	3.70	7.99	3.70
	Ln(1+bankruptcies)	3.08	0.99	3.15	0.87
	Profitability	-0.10	0.28	-0.10 0.28
	Fixed assets coverage	0.76	4.56	0.89	4.91
	Ln(1+size of assets)	11.96	1.40	12.06 1.39
	Ln(1+sales)	12.71	1.39	12.79 1.35
	Ln(1+age)	4.35	0.81	4.42	0.81
	Ln(1+empl.)	1.10	1.15	1.33	1.08
	Manufacturing	0.15	0.36	0.13	0.33
	Construction	0.27	0.44	0.32	0.47
	Wholesale-retail	0.30	0.46	0.28	0.45
	Transportation-storage	0.05	0.22	0.05	0.22
	Accommodation-food serv.	0.10	0.30	0.11	0.31
	Inform.-Com.	0.04	0.20	0.03	0.18
	Real estate	0.03	0.18	0.03	0.17
	Administrative-support activ. 0.06	0.24	0.05	0.23
	Energy, Water, Waste mgmt	0.00	0.05	0.00	0.06
	LLC	0.90	0.30	0.89	0.31
	Others	0.04	0.20	0.02	0.14
	Simpl. LLC	0.06	0.24	0.08	0.28
	Observations	25157	52029

Table 3 -

 3 Attempting reorganizationThis table provides the results for the three models: a dummy for the reform; quarters as time fixed effect (FE); adding employment zones (ZE) as fixed effects. We add several controls, described in Table1, business activity and legal form and financial ratios.

		(1)	(2)	(3)
	Reform effect on continuation bias (CB) depending on type of Court:
	Reform on CB in Absorbing	0.649 * * *	0.659 * * *	0.669 * *
		(0.007)	(0.010)	(0.017)
	Reform on CB in Absorbed	0.583 * *	0.597 * *	0.615 *
		(0.036)	(0.046)	(0.068)
	Reform on CB in New	0.290	0.278	0.299
		(0.115)	(0.102)	(0.131)
	Reform effect on type of Court:
	Reform for Absorbing	0.966	0.982	1.042
		(0.384)	(0.643)	(0.321)
	Reform for Absorbed	0.984	0.995	1.088
		(0.766)	(0.931)	(0.143)
	Reform for New	1.902 * * *	1.952 * * *	2.082 * * *
		(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)
	Continuation bias (CB) depending on type of Court:
	CB in Absorbing	1.823 * * *	1.805 * * *	1.608 * * *
		(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.001)
	CB in Absorbed	1.475 *	1.447 *	1.304
		(0.064)	(0.079)	(0.223)
	CB in New	3.324 *	3.490 *	3.043
		(0.079)	(0.065)	(0.112)
	Reform:
	Reform on continuation bias	1.313 * * *	1.303 * * *	1.324 * * *
		(0.003)	(0.005)	(0.006)
	Reform	1.070 * * *
		(0.003)
	Court characteristics:
	Assets shortfall	0.755 * * *	0.760 * * *	0.826 * *
		(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.026)
	Absorbing	1.314 * * *	1.278 * * *	1.205 * * *
		(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.001)
	Absorbed	1.205 * * *	1.102 * *	1.186 * *
		(0.000)	(0.046)	(0.011)
	New	0.935	0.897	0.490 * * *
		(0.612)	(0.411)	(0.004)
	Ln(1+distance)	0.985 * * *	0.986 * * *	0.997
		(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.256)
	Ln(1+bankruptcies)	0.898 * * *	0.853 * * *	1.009
		(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.563)
	Controls	Yes	Yes	Yes
	Firm financials	Yes	Yes	Yes
	Time FE	No	Yes	Yes
	ZE FE	No	No	Yes
	Observations	77186	77186	71394

p-values in parentheses

* p < 0.10, * * p < 0.05, * * * p < 0.01

Table 4 -

 4 Agreement upon reorganization plan

Table 5 -

 5 Survival after filing

Table 6 -

 6 Agreement upon reorganization plan (survival)

Table 7 -

 7 Attempting reorganization (distance as main effect)

		)	(2)	(3)
		Simple	T imeF E	ZEF E
	Reform effect on continuation bias (CB) depending on type of Court:
	Reform on CB in Absorbing	1.549 *	1.544 *	1.624 *
		(0.077)	(0.079)	(0.057)
	Reform on CB in Absorbed	1.049	1.032	1.046
		(0.899)	(0.933)	(0.907)
	Reform on CB in New	0.696	0.668	0.786
		(0.649)	(0.613)	(0.765)
	Reform effect on court's type:
	Reform for Absorbing	1.027	1.028	1.043
		(0.561)	(0.548)	(0.370)
	Reform for Absorbed	1.068	1.074	1.078
		(0.296)	(0.253)	(0.241)
	Reform for New	1.397 *	1.394 *	1.509 * *
		(0.057)	(0.059)	(0.021)
	Continuation bias (CB) depending on court's type:
	CB in Absorbing	0.868	0.864	0.830
		(0.471)	(0.460)	(0.360)
	CB in Absorbed	1.049	1.048	1.006
		(0.869)	(0.870)	(0.983)
	CB in New	2.482	2.632	2.248
		(0.135)	(0.112)	(0.189)
	Reform:
	Reform on continuation bias	0.796	0.799	0.765 *
		(0.124)	(0.130)	(0.091)
	Assets shortfall	0.803 *	0.806 *	0.839
		(0.061)	(0.066)	(0.165)
	Reform	0.913 * * *
		(0.001)
	Court characteristics:
	Absorbing	0.919 * *	0.916 * *	0.961
		(0.026)	(0.021)	(0.530)
	Absorbed	0.909 *	0.897 * *	0.972
		(0.081)	(0.050)	(0.706)
	New	0.832	0.830	0.616 *
		(0.234)	(0.226)	(0.064)
	Ln(1+distance)	1.014 * * *	1.014 * * *	1.012 * * *
		(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)
	Ln(1+bankruptcies)	0.983 *	0.977 * *	0.984
		(0.055)	(0.028)	(0.367)
	Observations	34870	34870	33016

Exponentiated coefficients; p-values in parentheses * p < 0.10, * * p < 0.05, * * * p < 0.01 33 7.3 Robustness checks

  p < 0.10, * * p < 0.05, * * * p < 0.01

		1)	(2)	(3)
	Reform effect depending on distance
	Reform on CB× Ln(1+distance)	-0.015	-0.012	-0.013
		(0.451)	(0.522)	(0.507)
	CB × Ln(1+distance)	-0.020	-0.021	-0.018
		(0.206)	(0.189)	(0.269)
	Reform × Ln(1+distance)	0.003	0.003	0.001
		(0.548)	(0.589)	(0.889)
	Ln(1+distance)	-0.011 * * *	-0.011 * * *	-0.003
		(0.004)	(0.004)	(0.500)
	Reform:
	Reform on continuation bias	0.194	0.175	0.183
		(0.244)	(0.294)	(0.280)
	Reform	0.031	0.020	-0.109
		(0.452)	(0.789)	(0.162)
	Court characteristics:
	Assets shortfall	0.142	0.143	0.148
		(0.300)	(0.298)	(0.286)
	Absorbing	0.137 * * *	0.143 * * *	0.218 * * *
		(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)
	Absorbed	-0.167 * * *	-0.159 * * *	0.048
		(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.385)
	New	0.180 * *	0.187 * * *	-0.316
		(0.011)	(0.008)	(0.160)
	Ln(1+bankruptcies)	-0.363 * * *	-0.361 * * *	-0.183 * * *
		(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)
	Controls	Yes	Yes	Yes
	Firm financials	Yes	Yes	Yes
	Time FE	No	Yes	Yes
	ZE FE	No	No	Yes
	Observations	77186	77186	71394
	p-values in parentheses

*

Table 8 -

 8 Attempting reorganization (placebo reform)

Report from the French Court of Auditors, January

2 Ibid.3 Conférence générale des juges consulaires

We consider that these firms with not enough assets to pay the judicial fees zombie firms

[START_REF] Montebourg | Tribunaux de commerce , une justice en faillite[END_REF]

Courts with less than 400 bankruptcy filings a year was supposedly the minimum threshold.

Report from the French Court of Auditors, January 2015

see Esquerré, 2017 for further details.

115 queries were filed by municipalities and associations to the French Council of State (Conseil d'Etat). All ended rejected.

"Efficiency criteria prevailed over proximity to citizens: the goal was to allow for good justice by the judges through a minimal size of their jurisdictions, to fight against the judge's solace, reach a minimal activity threshold and reinforce the judges' specialisation", Report to the Senate, 2011, p122.

This is the reporting tool used by the French commercial courts to report information to the Ministère de la Justice.

We assume here the managers do not file for bankruptcy in order to sell the firm but with the wish to save their business. At a personal level, a sale of the firm as a going concern may be preferred over a piecemeal liquidation. Yet, financially, it should not change anything for the manager.

An Employment zone is a geographic area within which most workers live and work ; and where firms can find most available staff for their vacancies, as defined by INSEE.

French census institution

See Esquerre, 2014 for the breakdown by size.

Source : Firms in France,

2016, INSEE

"It is the worst economic downturn in the post-war period."(in Houriez, Passeron, and Perret, 2010).


Maximilien Guérin

Louise Esher

Jean Léo Léonard

Sylvain Loiseau

Modelling diasystemic inflexion: Verb morphology in the Croissant linguistique

Introduction

Our paper explores how tools developed for the formal modelling of individual inflexional systems may be fruitfully applied to the description of inflexion in a dialect continuum or DIASYSTEM. We take as our case study the area of central France termed the CROISSANT LINGUISTIQUE (literally, 'Linguistic Crescent'; [START_REF] Tourtoulon | Limite géographique de la langue d'oc et de la langue d[END_REF][START_REF] Brun-Trigaud | Le Croissant : le concept et le mot[END_REF], usually characterized as a transitional zone between northern Gallo-Romance (Oïl) varieties and southern Gallo-Romance (Occitan) varieties.

For each of six survey points within the Croissant area, and a seventh, Occitan, survey point as a comparator, we analyse the inflexional morphology of the verb, using two principal formalizations: PARADIGM FUNCTION MORPHOLOGY [START_REF] Stump | Inflectional Morphology[END_REF][START_REF] Stump | Inflectional Paradigms[END_REF][START_REF] Stump | Morphological Typology, From Word to Paradigm[END_REF][START_REF] Bonami | Paradigm Function Morphology[END_REF] and STEM SPACES [START_REF] Bonami | Suppletion and dependency in inflectional morphology[END_REF][START_REF] Bonami | Supplétion et classes flexionnelles[END_REF][START_REF] Bonami | De formes en thèmes[END_REF][START_REF] Boyé | Régularités et classes flexionnelles dans la conjugaison du français[END_REF]. By these means, we obtain schemas highlighting the key principles of paradigm organization in each individual variety. Comparison of the schemas reveals structural continuities and discontinuities within the Croissant dialect continuum itself, and between the Croissant dialect continuum and neighbouring varieties.

Data

Seven localities, shown in Figure 1, were chosen to represent the study area: Dompierre-les-Eglises (Haute-Vienne), Cellefrouin (Charente), Bonnat (Creuse), Luchapt (Vienne), La Châtre-Langlin (Indre), Naves (Allier) and Châteauponsac (Haute-Vienne).

For each locality, a fieldwork questionnaire was used to elicit inflexional paradigms for 22 verb lexemes, the cognates of French chanter 'sing', lier 'bind', couver 'incubate', acheter 'buy', aller 'go', blanchir 'whiten', couvrir 'cover', partir 'leave', vendre 'sell', avoir 'have', être 'be', pouvoir 'be able ', vouloir 'want', savoir 'know', devoir 'have to', faire 'do', venir 'come', tenir 'hold', dire 'say', croire 'believe', prendre 'take' and voir 'see'. These lexemes were selected to illustrate the range of conjugational types expected to be present in central Gallo-Romance. For the purposes of the analysis, non-finite forms were excluded from consideration, as the morphological behaviour of these items is liable to show idiosyncratic divergence from that of finite forms (see e.g. [START_REF] Bach | Morphological evidence for the paradigmatic status of infinitives in French and Occitan[END_REF].

Analysis

Method

We identified stems, exponents associated with TAM values, and exponents associated with person/number values, and the paradigmatic distribution of each of these items. Based on this analysis, we formulated stem selection rules and realizational rules within the PFM framework. We then proceeded to model our results for the paradigmatic distribution of stem material, using stem spaces and stem dependency relations.

Exponents of person/number

A salient property of several inflexional systems in the Croissant area is the uniformity of personal desinences (see e.g. Table 1). For a given TAM category, the series of personal desinences identified showed no variation across lexemes. For a given person/number value, variation across TAM categories is extremely limited: in the singular, the westernmost survey points show a two-way contrast and more central survey points show a three-way contrast, while in the plural no contrast was found. The Croissant systems additionally present a high incidence of SYNCRETISM [START_REF] Baerman | The Syntax-Morphology Interface. A Study of Syncretism[END_REF][START_REF] Baerman | Syncretism[END_REF]) between personal desinences. Some patterns of syncretism are shared with neighbouring Occitan varieties, but not all: notably, the syncretism of second person singular and second person plural, characteristic of north-western Occitan varieties (see e.g. Lavalade 1987), is absent from the Croissant. We hypothesize that the extent of syncretism with respect to person and number values, and the widespread absence of distinctive desinences in singular forms, is linked to the obligatory nature of subject pronouns in varieties of the Croissant. The uniformity of personal desinences across lexemes argues for the inflexional class system in these varieties being based principally or solely on stem distribution (as proposed by [START_REF] Stump | Morphological Typology, From Word to Paradigm[END_REF] for French; compare also [START_REF] Martinet | De l'économie des formes du verbe en français parlé[END_REF], Dubois 1958) and we therefore propose a classification in these terms.

IPF.SBJV PRT FUT COND PRS.IND IPF.IND PRS.SBJV α β γ 1SG - - e - - - - 1SG e - - 2SG ɑ ɑ ɑ ɑ - ɑ - 2SG ɑ ɑ - 3SG - - - - - - - 3SG

Stem distributions

Comparison of the stem spaces obtained reveals a tendency for the distribution of root allomorphy in the varieties of the Croissant to diverge in two principal dimensions from the distributions attested in other Romance languages, such as French (Table 2). Firstly, inherited patterns of interpredictability between individual TAM categories are split along category lines (future differentiated from conditional; preterite differentiated from imperfect subjunctive). Secondly, where there is differentiation between cells belonging to the same TAM category, such differentiation is aligned with the morphosyntactic opposition of singular and plural. In the varieties of the Croissant, the distribution of root allomorphy is thus becoming increasingly systematized as an exponent of TAM and number.

The stem space analysis also brings internal variation within the Croissant area into focus: for example, singular/plural differentiation within a given TAM category is more extensive in northern than southern or central survey points; differentiation of future and conditional is established in most varieties, but confined to the plural in varieties such as that of Luchapt, and absent from some central survey points. Table 2. Stem space for finite forms in French (Boyé 2011:42) and in the variety of Luchapt.

The combination of the stem spaces themselves, and the dependency relations which we identify between stems in individual varieties, thus provide a practical means of comparing the distribution of inflexional exponents across our survey points. Based on these analyses, we identify salient features of the inflexional systems constituting the dialect continuum: shared features and points of contrast among the varieties of the Croissant and the areas adjoining it.

Conclusions

The formal descriptors of inflexional systems which we draw on in this study were, in general, developed as models of individual systems. Yet, as argued by [START_REF] Stump | Morphological Typology, From Word to Paradigm[END_REF], such descriptors are of empirical value for the typological and comparative study of speech varieties. Our study of inflexion in the Croissant dialect continuum offers a practical illustration in support of Stump & Finkel's view, also demonstrating the applicability of such formal descriptors to minority languages for which more limited data are available.

Our approach departs from traditional dialectological practice in that we are concerned primarily with the distribution of inflexional exponents (i.e. the structure of the inflexional paradigm itself) as opposed to the phonological realization of those exponents (compare Weinreich 1954 for a similar approach to phonological contrasts in a dialect continuum). For this reason, we select measures developed expressly in order to formalize the description of inflexional systems qua systems. The study results illustrate how such formalization facilitates transparent and objective comparisons between the different varieties, allowing points of similarity and divergence between linguistic varieties to be readily identified, and providing a genuinely morphological perspective on the internal structure of the dialect continuum.

Figure 1 .

 1 Figure 1. Survey points within the Croissant. (Inset: Croissant area within France).

French

Table 1 .

 1 Personal desinences in the variety of Bonnat: full and schematic series.

	-	-	-