Following the Great Recession, most states’ unemployment insurance (UI) trust funds became insolvent, requiring the states to borrow from the U.S. Treasury to finance benefit payments. This article describes the basics of UI financing and reviews the origins of the financial crisis facing the...

As an implicit form of insurance, bankruptcy may augment, substitute for, or limit other forms of insurance. Conversely, the presence of other forms of insurance may enhance or limit the usefulness of bankruptcy. An investigation of the interaction between one of the largest social insurance...

How do job losers use default -- a phenomenon 6x more prevalent than bankruptcy -- as a type of "informal" unemployment insurance, and more importantly, what are the social costs and benefits of this behavior? To this end, I establish several new facts: (i) job loss is the main reason for...