An Equilibrium Model of the Timing of Bankruptcy Filings

bankruptcy filing months later. While we possess reasonably sophisticated models of household default, we do not possess a comparably sophisticated model about the timing of a delinquent household's filing decision. The purpose of this project is to provide such a model and use it understand the determinants of such phenomena as "financial distress" (the period during which a delinquent debtor is pursued by creditors), "informal bankruptcy" (where a deliquent never repays but neither does he file for bankruptcy) and to infer something about the causal forces affecting the recently observed path of bankruptcy filings.