bankruptcy filing under Chapter 7 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. Competitive financial intermediaries offer a menu of loan sizes … statistics regarding bankruptcy and unsecured credit while matching key macroeconomic aggregates and the earnings and wealth …-testing” for households contemplating a Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing. They find that this policy change yields large welfare gains …

This paper argues that the U.S. bankruptcy reform of 2005 played an important role in the mortgage crisis and the … current recession. When debtors file for bankruptcy, credit card debt and other types of debt are discharged - thus loosening … debtors' budget constraints. Homeowners in financial distress can therefore use bankruptcy to avoid losing their homes, since …

proportional hazard model of bankruptcy and Merton’s contingent claims approach, we estimate the probability of default for U …

Auto lenders were perhaps the biggest winners of the 2005 Bankruptcy Reform. Cars depreciate quickly, so borrowers … to the market value of the car through a "cramdown" in Chapter 13 bankruptcy. The Reform prohibited cramdowns during the … eliminating cramdowns affected only one of the two types of consumer bankruptcy: Chapter 13. They exploit persistent historical …

access to unsecured credit (because of bankruptcy costs) and aggregate shocks, we show that the cyclical behavior of … credit match the sizes of credit and bankruptcy volatilities. We also find that when the right to file for bankruptcy does …