I study whether commercial banks’ loan loss allowances were inadequate during the 2008 financial crisis because bank managers relied on low-quality information to estimate loan losses. To measure the quality of information collected on bank-held mortgages prior to the crisis, I create a bank...

Financial innovations are a common explanation of the rise in consumer credit 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 to create each contract offered by...

Financial innovations are a common explanation of the rise in consumer credit 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 to create each contract offered by...

In 2018 there were almost three hundred thousand petitions filed under Chapter 13 of the Bankruptcy Code. But of this number fifty-five percent of these cases were dismissed. When the Chapter 13 trustee is holding funds yet to be disbursed at dismissal, a split in authority exists. Should the...

Unsecured Installment lenders offer high-interest credit to low-income, credit constrained consumers. Lenders typically extend $600 in cash to be paid back in equal monthly installments over 6-9 months at an annualized interest rate of around 125 percent. As state and federal regulations tighten...

How do defaults and bankruptcies affect optimal health insurance policy? I answer this question,using a life-cycle model of health investment with an option to default on emergency room(ER) bills and financial debts. I calibrate the model to the U.S. economy and compare the optimalhealth...

There is active debate over whether borrowers’ cognitive biases create a need for regulation to limit the misuse of credit. To tackle this question, we incorporate overoptimistic borrowers into an incomplete markets model with consumer bankruptcy. Lenders price loans, forming beliefs - type...

In 2005, reforms made formal personal bankruptcy much more costly. Shortly after, the US began to experience its most severe recession in seventy years, and while personal bankruptcy rates rose, they rose only modestly given the severity of the rise in unemployment. By contrast, informal default...

While Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and private subprime lenders have deservedly garnered the bulk of attention and blame for the mortgage crisis, other federal programs also distort our mortgage market and put taxpayers at risk of having to finance massive financial bailouts. The most prominent of...

This paper shows the importance of interest rate risk and prepayment risk in fixed-rate mortgages in influencing banks’ securitization of mortgages. Banks with longer-maturity liabilities are more capable of taking the interest rate risk and therefore securitize fewer mortgages. In contrast,...