The paper explores the long-term income elasticity of consumer and mortgage credit growth since World War II. It also examines other economic factors, to determine whether recent credit use is anomalous. Two-stage least squares show consumer credit income elasticity to be slightly below 1.0,...

The Impact of Public Policy on Consumer Credit presents a collection of research papers and discussions commissioned to commemorate the silver anniversary of Georgetown University's Credit Research Center in 1999. Nine topics serve as focal points for the volume, with the general theme `What do...

This study analyzes the effects of state bankruptcy asset exemptions and foreclosure laws on mortgage default and foreclosure rates across different segments of the mortgage market. We found that the effects of these legal provisions are larger for subprime than for prime mortgages and larger...

We analyze the effects of state predatory mortgage lending laws, which have been a model for recent changes in the United States federal legislation enacted to regulate the mortgage contract terms common in higher-risk mortgage market segments. Using the Rothschild-Stiglitz approach to model...

In their pioneering work, Musto and Souleles (Journal of Monetary Economics 53(1):59–84, <CitationRef CitationID="CR19">2006</CitationRef>) apply portfolio theory to consumer lending. This paper extends their work by analyzing three county-level credit outcome betas. We use the probability of default calibrated from the credit score, the...</citationref>