It is challenging to explain the collapse in the price of subprime mortgage-backed securities (MBS) during the Financial Crisis of 2008, using the existing models of fire-sale. I present amodel to demonstrate that fire-sales may happen evenwhen there is a relatively sizable pool of natural...

This paper studies the optimal determination of bankruptcy exemptions for risk averse borrowers who use unsecured contracts but have the possibility of defaulting. I show that, in a large class of economies, knowledge of four variables is sufficient to determine whether a bankruptcy exemption...