(Updated February, 2014) Financial innovations are a common explanation for the rise in credit card debt and bankruptcies. To evaluate this story, we develop a simple model that incorporates two key frictions: asymmetric information about borrowers’ risk of default and a fixed cost of...

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This paper investigates the effect of private pensions on the retirement wealth distribution. The model incorporates stochastic private pension coverage into a life- cycle model with stochastic earnings. The predictions of the calibrated model are compared to the distribution of retirement net...

Personal bankruptcies in the United States have increased dramatically, rising from 1.4 per thousand working age population in 1970 to 8.5 in 2002. We use a heterogeneous agent life-cycle model with competitive financial intermediaries who can observe households' earnings, age and current asset...