We study asset-tested unemployment insurance in an incomplete markets model with moral hazard during job search. Asset testing has two counteracting effects on welfare. On the one hand, it improves consumption insurance by introducing state contingent transfers to agents most in need. On the...

In HANK, we show that fiscal policy is an appropriate macroeconomic stabilization tool at the ZLB. Fiscal policy achieves the same macroeconomic aggregates and the same welfare as hypothetically unconstrained monetary policy by replicating its transmission mechanism. Consumption taxes and labor...

This paper investigates the impact of financial liberalization on the relationship between consumption and total wealth (i.e., the sum of asset wealth and human wealth). We propose a heterogeneous agent framework with incomplete markets where financial liberalization, by signalling a future...

This paper studies the optimal consumption behavior of individuals who face borrowing limitations that vary stochastically with their income. This framework is motivated by new empirical evidence that I document in U.S. aggregate data: predictable growth in consumer credit is significantly...

Smoother labor incomes alleviate credit constraints by reducing workers' desire to borrow, and prospects of upward income mobility have smaller beneficial effects for currently poor workers when borrowing constraints are binding. These simple theoretical insights are consistent with the...

This paper presents an empirical investigation of the role of credit in the post-stabilization consumption booms of Mexico, Chile and Israel. Credit from the banking sector to the private sector expanded very rapidly following the stabilizations. I show that this increase in credit reduced the...