We provide a model with endogenous portfolios of secured and unsecured household debt. Secured debt is collateralized by owner-occupied housing whereas unsecured debt can be discharged according to bankruptcy regulations. We show that the calibrated model matches important quantitative...

Both personal bankruptcy and redistributive taxes can insure households' consumption risk and both vary considerably across US states. We derive sufficient conditions under which more redistributive taxation makes bankruptcy exemptions less attractive both for the intratemporal insurance and for...

This paper explores the willingness of entrepreneurs to pay for wealth insurance to protect personal assets in case of business failure and the impact of this strategy on small business operation decisions. I show that antidiscrimination laws allow married firm owners in half of U.S. states to...

In this survey, we review the quantitative macroeconomic literature analyzing consumer debt and default. We start by providing an overview of consumer bankruptcy law in the US and document the relevant institutional changes over time. We proceed with a comprehensive empirical section, describing...

When facing financial distress, French households can file a case to a "households' over-indebtedness commission" (HDC). The HDC can order an immediate repayment or grant a debt suspension. Exploiting the random assignment of bankruptcy filings to managers, we show that a debt suspension has a...

The importance of place of birth or residence on a host of economic outcomes cannot be overstated. The treatment of households in consumer bankruptcy appears to be no different. Despite the U.S. Bankruptcy Code being federal law, there is extreme geographic variation in the relative use of the...

Individuals with extensive debt may be granted debt relief in court. We provide a comprehensive evaluation of the Danish debt relief program with data from court records linked to nationwide register data. Using event-study methods and quasi-random assignment of applicants to court trustees with...

Some individuals borrow extensively on their credit cards. This paper tests whether present-biased time preferences correlate with credit card borrowing. In a field study, we elicit individual time preferences with incentivized choice experiments, and match resulting time preference measures to...

The 1996 Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act barred states from giving unlawful residents postsecondary education benefits that states do not offer to U.S. citizens. In contrast to this federal law, several states have passed legislation explicitly allowing undocumented immigrants to pay...

There is a substantial correlation between household debt and bodyweight. Theory suggests that a causal relationship between debt and bodyweight could run in either direction or both could be caused by unobserved common factors. We use OLS and Propensity Score Matching to ascertain if household...