countercyclicality of bankruptcy filings found in U.S. data? Yes, it does, but only if we explicitly model recessions as displaying … bankruptcy risk discouraging households from using credit. This finding contradicts the intuition that access to credit helps …

consumer bankruptcy filers. In particular, the authors’ data allow them to distinguish between Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 … bankruptcy filings, to observe changes in credit demand and credit supply explicitly, and to differentiate existing and new … credit accounts. The paper has four main findings. First, despite speedy recovery in their risk scores after bankruptcy …

Bankruptcy reform in 2005 eliminated debtors’ ability to discharge private student loan debt in bankruptcy. This law … bankruptcy even if they had sufficient income to service their debt. Using a unique, nationally representative sample of … anonymized credit bureau files, we examine the bankruptcy filing and delinquency rates of private student loan borrowers in …

What are the positive and normative implications of eliminating bankruptcy protection for indebted individuals? Without … bankruptcy protection, creditors can collect on defaulted debt to the extent permitted by wage garnishment laws. The elimination …

A large literature has examined factors leading to filing for personal bankruptcy, but little is known about household … borrowing after bankruptcy. Using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances, we find that relative to comparable nonfilers …, bankruptcy filers generally have more limited access to unsecured credit but borrow more secured debt post bankruptcy, and they …