After emerging market crises, value added falls more in manufacturing industries that normally exhibit higher inventory/cost ratios. Moreover, the difference in value added between manufacturing industries with different inventory/cost ratios persists years into the recovery. A shock to...

The widespread use of debt and default suggests that unsecured credit markets play an important role in consumption smoothing. In this paper, I address two previously unanswered questions. First, how does policy towards debt default affect the evolution of consumption and net worth over the...

We study the extent to which unsecured credit markets have altered the transmission of increased income risk to consumption variability over the past several decades. We find that unsecured credit markets pass through increased income risk to consumption, irrespective of bankruptcy policy and...