Standard economic theory says that unsecured, high-interest, short-term debt -- such as borrowing via credit cards and … transitory income shock of unemployment. Instead, individuals smooth their credit card debt and overdrafts by adjusting … consumption. We first use detailed longitudinal information on debit and credit card transactions, account balances, and credit …

A growing literature shows that credit indicators forecast aggregate real outcomes. While researchers have proposed … simple, frictionless, model explains empirical findings commonly attributed to credit cycles. Our key assumption is that … firms have heterogeneous exposures to underlying economy-wide shocks. This leads to endogenous dispersion in credit quality …

Although a credit tightening is commonly recognized as a key determinant of the Great Recession, to date, it is unclear … whether a worsening of credit conditions faced by households or by firms was most responsible for the downturn. Some studies … have suggested that the household-side credit channel is quantitatively the most important one. Many others contend that …

This paper proposes a methodology for measuring credit booms and uses it to identify credit booms in emerging and … regularities of credit booms in macroeconomic aggregates and micro-level data. Macro data show a systematic relationship between … credit booms and economic expansions, rising asset prices, real appreciations, widening external deficits and managed …

exceeded, and eventually real wage growth began to accumulate for workers across the distribution. In fact, the business cycle … (including recession and recovery) beginning in December 2007 was one of the better periods of real wage growth in many decades …

U.S. labor and total-factor productivity growth slowed prior to the Great Recession. The timing rules out explanations … intensively, consistent with a return to normal productivity growth after nearly a decade of exceptional IT-fueled gains. A … calibrated growth model suggests trend productivity growth has returned close to its 1973-1995 pace. Slower underlying …

owes to the protracted nature of recovery. On average, it takes about eight years to reach the pre-crisis level of income …; the median is about 6 ½ years. Five to six years after the onset of crisis, only Germany and the US (out of 12 systemic …

Do steep recoveries follow deep recessions? Does it matter if a credit crunch or banking panic accompanies the … experience in an attempt to answer these questions. The answers depend on the definition of a financial crisis and on how much of …