My former colleague, Scott Pryor (Regent), recently posted an interesting article entitled Municipal Bankruptcy: When Doing Less is Best. In 2013 Professor Pryor was the Resident Scholar of the American Bankruptcy Institute.  His paper's abstract is below.  

The bankruptcy process takes as a given the pre-bankruptcy allocation of economic risk. Yet, the Bankruptcy Code permits this risk to be reallocated through the adjustment process so long as that reallocation is "fair and equitable," does not "discriminate unfairly," and is in the "best interests" of creditors. The first two look to bankruptcy law for their definitions; the third derives from state law.

Chapter 9 of the Bankruptcy Code does not resolve any conflicts among these requirements. This uncertain state of affairs generates a powerful incentive among most parties to settle. So long as the court retains the power to dismiss the case and remit the conflicts to the vagaries of state adjudication, Chapter 9 functions to create an institutional game of Chicken driving stakeholders to consensus.