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 …