To provide further insights into the current debate on consumer bankruptcy, this article empirically assesses the impact of state bankruptcy exemption levels on the likelihood of small business owners filing for bankruptcy. We estimate a proportional hazard model of small business bankruptcy...

When borrowers are delinquent, senior debtholders prefer liquidation whereas junior debtholders prefer to maintain their option value by delaying resolution or modifying the loan. In the mortgage market, a conflict of interest (“holdup”) arises when servicers of securitized senior liens are...

In this paper, we examine how homestead, personal property, and garnishment laws affect consumer's default behavior by focusing on the credit card market. After controlling for credit supply and quot;shock effectquot; variables we investigate whether consumer propensity for formal and informal...

In this paper, we examine how county unemployment rates affect consumers' delinquency and bankruptcy behavior by focusing on the credit card market. In particular, after controlling for credit supply and shocks like divorce and health coverage we investigate whether consumer propensity for...

To provide some insights to the current debate on consumer bankruptcy laws, this article empirically assesses the importance of state bankruptcy exemption levels on the likelihood of small business owners filing for bankruptcy. We accomplish this with the help of a unique panel data set of over...

Yes, it did. We use exogenous variation in banks' incentives to conform to the standards of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) around regulatory exam dates to trace out the effect of the CRA on lending activity. Our empirical strategy compares lending behavior of banks undergoing CRA exams...

Using transaction-level credit card spending from a leading Chinese commercial bank, we show that consumers prefer firms with higher Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) profiles. Specifically, we show that consumers increase their consumption by 4.9 percentage points as the ESG rating...

This paper examines the impact of the recently passed JOBS Act on the behavior of market participants. Using the JOBS Act - which relaxed mandatory information disclosure requirements - as a natural experiment on firms' choices of the optimal mix of hard, accounting information and textual...

Financially constrained borrowers have the incentive to influence the appraisal process in order to increase borrowing or reduce the interest rate. We document that the average valuation bias for residential refinance transactions is above 5%. The bias is larger for highly leveraged...

The main rationale for policy intervention in debt renegotiation is to enhance such activity when foreclosures are perceived to be inefficiently high. We examine the ability of the government to influence debt renegotiation by empirically evaluating the effects of the 2009 Home Affordable...