The annualized interest rate for a payday loan often exceeds 10 times that of a typical credit card, yet this market grew immensely in the 1990s and 2000s, elevating concerns about the risk payday loans pose to consumers and whether payday lenders target minority neighborhoods. This paper...

From 1999 to 2013, U.S. mortgage debt doubled and then contracted sharply. Our understanding of the factors driving this volatility in the stock of debt is hampered by a lack of data on mortgage flows. Using comprehensive, individual-level panel data on consumer liabilities, I estimate detailed...

One of the major reasons hypothesized for the tepid economic recovery thus far is the ongoing "deleveraging" process. From 2009:Q3 to 2011:Q3, aggregate household debt declined by about $1.5 trillion in real terms, with mortgage debt falling by about $1 trillion. Other than defaults, the factors...

In this dissertation, I provide evidence of the causal impact on mortgage supply of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and the "Government-Sponsored Enterprises (GSE) Act", laws requiring banks and the GSEs (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), respectively, to help improve credit access for...

In this paper I estimate the effect of the Underserved Areas Goal (UAG) established under the “GSE Act”, a 1992 law mandating that the housing government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac help promote credit access and homeownership opportunities for low-income households and...

A central question in the literature on mortgage default is at what point underwater homeowners walk away from their homes even if they can afford to pay. We study borrowers from Arizona, California, Florida, and Nevada who purchased homes in 2006 using non-prime mortgages with 100 percent...