Understanding the factors that influence arrears is crucial if policy makers wish to alleviate the problems caused by debt. But conventional estimates of repayment behaviour impose implausible assumptions about lender behaviour. However, an upper and lower bound for the effect of the...

If households face uninsurable idiosyncratic earnings risk, theory predicts that redistributive tax and transfer systems have both an insurance and a distortionary effect. Exploiting the substantial variation of tax and transfer systems across U.S. states and over time, we investigate the...

Personal bankruptcy regulation and redistributive taxes and transfers vary considerably across U.S. states and over time. Our hypothesis is that both policies are imperfect substitutes in insuring consumption of risk-averse agents in incomplete markets. Exploiting data variation over time for 18...

We investigate the issue of pervasive credit constraints among US households. There is considerable debate about the incidence of constraints and whether the observed low borrowing in some groups of the population arises from low demand or from denial of credit. Using information on unsecured...