Consumer over-indebtedness has increased globally in recent decades, along with
consumer credit. This article presents a systematic literature review on the topic of consumer …

This survey discusses recent contributions to the quantitative literature on unsecured
consumer debt and default, and some ongoing challenges for the literature. Key topics …

Consumer bankruptcy is one of the largest social insurance programs in the United States,
but little is known about its impact on debtors. We use 500,000 bankruptcy filings matched to …

This paper estimates the effect of Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection on financial health using
a new data set linking bankruptcy filings to credit bureau records. Our empirical strategy …

What is the role of credit scores in credit markets? We argue that it is, in part, the market's
assessment of a person's unobservable type, which here we take to be patience. We …

This paper argues that the debt forgiveness provided by the US consumer bankruptcy
system helped stabilize employment levels during the Great Recession. We document that …

A life-cycle model is developed in which households face income and house-price risk and
buy houses with mortgages. This model, which accounts for key features in US data, is used …

This paper studies the role of moral hazard and liquidity in driving household bankruptcy.
First, I estimate that increases in potential debt forgiveness have a positive, but small, effect …

How does consumer credit access impact job flows, earnings, and entrepreneurship? To
answer this question, we build a new administrative dataset which links individual …

This article documents and interprets a fact central to the dynamics of informal consumer
debt default. We observe that for individuals 60–90 days late on payments,(i) 85% make …