This 2004 Article IV Consultation highlights that from 1999 to 2002, Korea’s economy grew rapidly, by an average of 7¼ percent per year. But starting in 2003, the economy has begun to sputter. Growth suddenly stopped in the first half of the year, leapt ahead in the second half as...

Economic security is the protection from hardship causing economic losses. Such losses can occur due to unemployment, medical emergencies, and other unforeseen events. To measure how well prepared families are for these events, we calculate a series of middle class security indicators,...

Our previous research argued that interest payments on consumer debt should be subtracted from household income to measure poverty. We estimated 4 million additional poor Americans in 2007, calling them "debt poor." This paper finds that the debt poor are somewhat like the poor (they are...

Models of the macrodynamic impact of private debt tend to emphasize the role of corporate debt. Corporate leverage affects macroeconomic outcomes and can contribute to financial fragility. We show that consumer debt is also important. We include consumer as well as corporate debt in a stock-flow...

Debt-financed consumption sprees can be socially costly. Easy access to credit can push economic activity above sustainable levels, eventually requiring cutbacks in spending, lay-offs from over-grown sectors, and write-downs of bad debts. This paper investigates problems of over-borrowing,...

We extend Kaldor’s theory of income distribution to include workers’ debt accumulation and their motive to emulate rentiers’ consumption. Our results show that (i) the interaction between income distribution and emulation can produce instability, (ii) instability is more likely when the...