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There is some consensus amongst the Spanish doctrine and the judiciary about the need to discharge the insolvent debtor from its unpaid debts once all his present assets have been exhausted. For a significant part of the authors, the discharge will help to treat equally individuals and companies in the event of bankruptcy. In fact, it will permit individuals -and not only com-panies-, to get rid of their debts after liquidation even if it will impose on creditors the negative consequences of the discharge. A proper design will help to reduce the negative consequences of the discharge over the credit market. This approach is however controversial, because it examines the discharge from an ex post point of view and from the exclusive perspective of the debtor. This paper proposes to change the perspective of the analysis and to examine the discharge from an ex ante point of view. The analysis will then show that, on one hand, the discharge is efficient because the benefits it generates for the society, in terms of increasing productive investment, are higher than the costs it imposes, particularly, to the creditors, and, on the other hand, as the relation cost-benefit is positive, the strict conditions imposed by the statute to grant the discharge are not justified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]