Closed exchange and production-and-exchange economies may have multiple equilibria, a fact that is usually ignored in macroeconomic models. Our basic argument is that default and bankruptcy laws are required to prevent strategic default, and these laws can also serve to provide the conditions...

We show that binomial economies with financial assets are an informative and tractable model to study endogenous leverage and collateral equilibrium: endogenous leverage can be highly volatile, but it is always easy to compute. The possibility of default can have a dramatic effect on...

The possibility of the presence of multiple equilibria in closed exchange and production-and-exchange economies is usually ignored in macroeconomic models even though they are important in real economies. We argue that default and bankruptcy laws serve to provide the conditions for uniqueness of...

We prove that in competitive market economies with no insurance for idiosyncratic risks, agents will always overinvest in illiquid long term assets and underinvest in short term liquid assets. We take as our setting the seminal model of Diamond and Dybvig (1983), who first posed the question in...

Our paper provides a complete characterization of leverage and default in binomial economies with financial assets serving as collateral. Our Binomial No-Default Theorem states that any equilibrium is equivalent (in real allocations and prices) to another equilibrium in which there is no...

Our paper provides a complete characterization of leverage and default in binomial economies with financial assets serving as collateral. Our Binomial No-Default Theorem states that any equilibrium is equivalent (in real allocations and prices) to another equilibrium in which there is no...

Closed exchange and production-and-exchange economies may have multiple equilibria, a fact that is usually ignored in macroeconomic models. Our basic argument is that default and bankruptcy laws are required to prevent strategic default, and these laws can also serve to provide the conditions...

Our paper provides a complete characterization of leverage and default in binomial economies with financial assets serving as collateral. First, our Binomial No-Default Theorem states that any equilibrium is equivalent (in real allocations and prices) to another equilibrium in which there is no...

We specify and estimate a lifecycle model of consumption, housing demand and labor supply in an environment where individuals may file for bankruptcy or default on their mortgage. Uncertainty in the model is driven by house price shocks, education specific productivity shocks, and catastrophic...