The determinants of transitions between different states of financial distress are analyzed using two versions of Markov chain models: a multinomial logit model without random effects and a multinomial logit model capturing such unobservable factors. The empirical analysis is based on a panel...

The goal of this paper is to show that household-level financial distress (FD) varies greatly, meaning there is unequal exposure to macroeconomic risk, and that FD can increase macroeconomic vulnerability. To do this, we first establish three facts: (i) regions in the U.S. vary significantly in...