Credit limit variability is a crucial aspect of the consumption, savings, and debt decisions of households in the United States. Using a large panel, this paper first demonstrates that individuals gain and lose access to credit frequently and often have their credit limits reduced unexpectedly....

The United States provides a unique laboratory for understanding how the cultural, institutional, and human capital endowments of immigrant groups shape economic outcomes. In this paper, we use census micro-samples to reconstruct the country-of-ancestry composition of the population of U.S....

We examine a period during the prevalence of the gold standard in the United States to provide evidence that speculation about a currency peg can have damaging effects on bank balance sheets. In particular, the defeat of the pro-silver candidate in the 1896 presidential election was associated...

The revolving credit available to consumers changes substantially over the business cycle, the life cycle, and for individuals. We show that debt changes at the same time as credit, so credit utilization is remarkably stable. From ages 20–40, for example, credit card limits grow by more than...

"In March 2020, economic and social life across the United States came to an abrupt halt as the country tried to slow the spread of COVID-19. In the worst economic contraction since the Great Depression, twenty-two million people lost their jobs between mid-March and mid-April of 2020. And yet...