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

Unemployed households' access to unsecured revolving credit more than tripled over the
last three decades. This article analyses how both cyclical fluctuations and trend increases …

In 2005, reforms made formal personal bankruptcy much more costly. Shortly after, the US
began to experience its most severe recession in seventy years, and while personal …

We ask two questions related to how access to credit affects the nature of business cycles.
First, does the standard theory of unsecured credit account for the high volatility and …

We document the cyclical properties of unsecured consumer credit (procyclical and volatile)
and of consumer bankruptcies (countercyclical and very volatile). Using a growth model with …

In this survey, we review the quantitative macroeconomic literature analyzing consumer debt
and default. We start by providing an overview of consumer bankruptcy law in the US and …

We build a structural model that captures salient features of personal bankruptcy under
Chapter 13. We estimate our model using a novel data set that we construct from …

Dramatic fiscal developments in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and global recession
led researchers to recognize how little we know about fiscal policies and their impacts. This …

What is the optimal consumer bankruptcy law? I answer this question using an incomplete
markets life-cycle model with a planner who can choose state-contingent bankruptcy costs. I …

How does bankruptcy protection affect household balance sheet adjustments and aggregate
consumption when credit tightens? Using a tractable model of unsecured consumer credit …