How might society ensure the allocation of credit to those who lack meaningful collateral? Two very different options that have each been pursued by a variety of societies through time and space are (i) relatively harsh penalties for default and, more recently, (ii) loan guarantee programs that...

Over the past three decades six striking features of aggregates in the unsecured credit market have been documented: (1) rising personal bankruptcy rates, (2) rising dispersion in unsecured interest rates across borrowing households, (3) the emergence of a discount for borrowers with good credit...

This paper documents and interprets two facts central to the dynamics of informal default or "delinquency" on unsecured consumer debt. First, delinquency does not mean a persistent cessation of payment. In particular, we observe that for individuals 60 to 90 days late on payments, 85% make...

Limited personal liability for debts has long been justified as a tool to promote entrepreneurial risk taking by providing insurance to the borrower in the event of low returns. Nonetheless, such limits erode repayment incentives, and so may increase unsecured borrowing costs. Our paper is the...

The 1990's witnessed a historically unprecedented number of personal bankruptcy filings. In response, congressional debate over bankruptcy law has recently led to several proposals aimed at making it more difficult to exempt wealth in bankruptcy. In this paper, I evaluate uniform exemption...

Tertiary education in the U.S. requires large investments that are risky, lumpy, and well-timed. Tertiary education is also heavily subsidized. By making the risk of human capital investment more acceptable, especially to low wealth households, subsidies may increase investment in human capital,...

In U.S. data, income interruptions, the receipt of public insurance, and the incidence of personal bankruptcy are all closely related. The central contribution of this paper is to evaluate both bankruptcy protection and public insurance in a unified setting where each program alters incentives...

Portfolio choice models counter factually predict (or advise) almost universal equity market participation and a high share for equity in wealth early in life. Empirically consistent predictions have proved elusive without participation costs, informational frictions, or non standard...

At first glance, college appears to be of great value to most, given its mean returns and sharply subsidized tuition. An empirically-disciplined human capital model that allows for variation in college readiness suggests otherwise: Nearly half of high school completers place zero value on access...

Using recently available proprietary panel data, we show that while many (35%) US consumers experience financial distress at some point in the life cycle, most of the events of financial distress are primarily concentrated in a much smaller proportion of consumers in persistent trouble. Roughly...