Wealth in the United States rose and fell precipitously during the first decade of this century for all major ethnic groups, but the fluctuations in Hispanic wealth were especially extreme. We show that household characteristics and location can account for the Hispanic experience during the...

We use the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to revisit what is termed the credit card debt puzzle: why consumers simultaneously co-hold high-interest credit card debt and low-interest assets that could be used to pay down this debt. This dataset contains unique information on...

We evaluate the impact of increased income uncertainty and financial liberalization in the US on consumption volatility and household welfare. We estimate Euler equations and measure the volatility of unpredictable changes in consumption as the squared Euler equation residuals. We directly...