Cross-sectional data show that money holding differs significantly over household consumption and age. Liquidity demand for money (i.e., money holding per dollar of consumption) decreases as household consumption increases. It also increases with household age conditional on the level of...

In this paper, we ask to what extent changes to the age and sex structure of the population account for the changes in the marriage behavior observed in the United States in the last century (from 1900 to 1980). The decrease in mortality, especially for women, and the changes in immigration...

This paper studies informal default in consumer credit as the start of a process of negotiation with the lender. We consider an economy with uninsurable individual risk where households in debt have also the option of declaring formal bankruptcy. In a calibrated version of the model, informal...

This paper develops a new theory of long term unsecured credit contracts based on costly contracting that matches the data in a variety of dimensions. Credit lines are long term relations between lending firms and households that pre-specify a credit limit and interest rate in each period....

This paper studies properties of economies with complete markets where there is positive default on consumer debt. Households can default partially, at a punishment cost, and intermediaries price this risk competitively. This en- vironment yields only partial insurance. The risk-based pricing of...