The intersection of research and policy on consumer credit often has a Goldilocks feel. Some researchers and policymakers posit that consumer credit markets produce too much credit. Other researchers and policymakers posit that markets produce too little credit. I review theories and evidence on...

Securitization has been widely assigned blame for contributing to the recent mortgage market meltdown and ensuing financial crisis. In this paper, we employ the OCC Home Equity database to develop estimates of default and prepayment probabilities for home equity lines of credit originated during...

Much has been written about the problem of consumer credit in the United States over the past decade. In this paper, we survey the prevailing economic theories of consumer credit, which identify a common root problem. Namely, consumers can potentially underestimate borrowing costs, and lenders...

We study a government policy that restricts repayment choices with the aim of reducing credit card debt. The policy requires the minimum payment on credit card balances in Quebec to be at least 2% of the statement balance for cards opened before August 2019 and at least 5% for cards opened after...

We consider a Keynes-Goodwin model of effective demand and the distributive cycle where workers purchase goods and houses with marginal propensity significantly larger than one. They therefore need credit, supplied from asset holders, and have to pay interest on their outstanding debt. In this...

We examine the financial conditions of dealers that participated in two of the Federal Reserve's lender-of-last-resort (LOLR) facilities -- the Term Securities Lending Facility (TSLF) and the Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF) -- that provided liquidity against a range of assets during...