Proposals exist to change public employees’ retirement benefits from defined benefit (DB) pensions. This could increase employee turnover and raise initial compensation. More experienced employees are replaced with less experienced ones, reducing effectiveness. But, new hires’ effectiveness...

Rising health care costs and declining personal savings rates are nearly synonymous with household medical debt. For some, defined contribution (DC) retirement savings plans provide a ready source of funds to meet these medical debts. We examine whether health status and health insurance...

After 2000, the vast majority of defined benefit (DB) pension plans encountered a decrease in their funding ratios, largely due to a drop in asset prices. It is possible that public sector pension plans may have acted imprudently by chasing returns, once they encountered underfunding. We...

Since the early 1990s, credit expanded relative to income, especially after 2001. It is hypothesized that traditionally uneven credit access and gaps in the costs of credit by demographic characteristics shrank during this period. Relying on data from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer...

Financial instability has increased for many economies in the face of greater capital mobility. Eliminating capital flows, especially portfolio investment flows, may reduce volatility, but it could also result in domestic capital constraints. To overcome this dilemma, policymakers may consider...

For decades, personal bankruptcies increased in the U.S., either reflecting growing economic distress of families or a declining stigma associated with filing for bankruptcy. In a nod to the latter argument, the U.S. Congress passed the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Prevention Act of...

During its last complete business cycle, from 2001 to 2007, the United States experienced unsustainably high trade deficits. Policymakers are considering a number of measures to avoid a recurrence of such large external imbalances. One such measure is the promotion of better labor rights around...

The United States experienced an unprecedented financial crisis after 2007. This paper analyzes if retirees had enough wealth built up to weather the financial risks that materialized in the crisis. Financial risks associated with saving for retirement had increasingly shifted onto individuals...

Over the past few decades, financial markets have become increasingly deregulated and household debt has expanded, sometimes rapidly. It is possible that greater deregulation led to improved credit access--measured by loan denials, discouraged applications, and costs of credit-- for typically...

From the late 1990s through 2005, the U.S. experienced an unprecedented housing boom, which boosted the asset values of many families. This meant, on the one hand, that families with homes had more collateral to borrow against, but it also meant that new home buyers needed to take out larger...