Both personal bankruptcy and redistributive taxes can insure households’ consumption risk and both vary considerably across US states. We derive sufficient conditions under which more redistributive taxation makes bankruptcy exemptions less attractive both for the intratemporal insurance and...

The analysis sets out to clarify whether households’ demand for consumer credit can be adequately explained by models presented in the literature (life-cycle and permanent income) or whether other factors are observable, such as the use of debt to alleviate financial difficulties. With this in...

The paper focuses on the consumer credit market in Italy and on the related risk of over-indebtedness. Using survey panel data, we investigate the impact of overindebtedness on consumption behaviour, evaluating in particular if consumer credit is used to cover gaps in income and if this is...

Smoother labor incomes alleviate credit constraints by reducing workers' desire to borrow, and prospects of upward income mobility have smaller beneficial effects for currently poor workers when borrowing constraints are binding. These simple theoretical insights are consistent with the...

Both personal bankruptcy and redistributive taxes can insure households' consumption risk and both vary considerably across US states. We derive sufficient conditions under which more redistributive taxation makes bankruptcy exemptions less attractive both for the intratemporal insurance and for...