On September 8, 2003, the Payment Cards Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia hosted a workshop on consumer bankruptcy and its effect on unsecured lenders. Professor Melissa Jacoby of Temple University’s School of Law led the workshop. A leading bankruptcy scholar, Jacoby...

We ask two questions related to how access to credit affects the nature of business cycles. First, does the standard theory of unsecured credit account for the high volatility and procyclicality of credit and the high volatility and countercyclicality of bankruptcy filings found in U.S. data?...

Supersedes Working Paper No. 13-24 This paper uses a unique data set to shed new light on credit availability to 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...

Bankruptcy reform in 2005 eliminated debtors’ ability to discharge private student loan debt in bankruptcy. This law aimed to reduce costly defaults by diminishing the perceived incentive of some private student loan borrowers to declare bankruptcy even if they had sufficient income to service...

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 lowers the default premium on unsecured debt...

Presented by Charles I. Plosser, President and Chief Executive Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia> Conference on the Squam Lake Report: Fixing the Financial System, New York, NY, June 16, 2010>

By compiling a novel data set from bankruptcy court dockets recorded in Delaware between 2001 and 2002, the authors build and estimate a structural model of Chapter 13 bankruptcy. This allows them to quantify how key debtor characteristics, including whether they are experiencing bankruptcy for...

We are the first to show that the cost of personal bankruptcy filers traveling to their bankruptcy trustees affects bankruptcy choices. We use detailed balance sheet, income statement, and location data from 400,000 Canadian bankruptcies. To control for endogenous trustee selection, we use the...

This paper argues that the U.S. bankruptcy reform of 2005 played an important role in the mortgage crisis and the current recession. When debtors file for bankruptcy, credit card debt and other types of debt are discharged - thus loosening debtors' budget constraints. Homeowners in financial...

We are the first to examine whether exogenous shocks cause personal bankruptcy through the balance sheet channel and/or the income statement channel. For identification, we examine the effect of exogenous, politically motivated government payments on 200,000 Canadian bankruptcy filings. We find...