Using a nationally representative panel of consumer credit records for the US from 1999 to 2021, we document a positive correlation between child and parent homeownership. We propose a new causal mechanism behind this relationship based on parents extracting home equity to help finance their...

This paper studies the effects of private real estate collateral on entrepreneurial lending and entrepreneurial activity in the Netherlands. The residential collateral channel is especially relevant for sole-proprietors who own a business with unlimited liability. We used administrative data on...

How are the welfare costs from monopoly distributed across U.S. households? We answer this question for the U.S. credit card industry, which is highly concentrated, charges interest rates that are 3.4 to 8.8 percentage points above perfectly competitive pricing, and has repeatedly lost antitrust...

We show that the size of collateralized household debt determines an economy's vulnerability to crises of confidence. The house price feeds back on itself by contributing to a liquidity effect, which operates through the value of housing in a collateral constraint. Over a specific range of debt...

This paper investigates whether self-employed households use consumer loans - in particular instalment loans and overdrafts - to finance business activities. Controlling for financial and non-financial household variables we show that self-employed households particularly use personal overdrafts...

We investigate the impact of a substantial minimum wage increase, which became effective in January 2016, on consumer loans in Turkey. Using bank-level data and designing an original identification strategy, we ask whether the loans provided by banks with a historically high share of low-wage...

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...