Worldwide, countries have been restricting work and social activities to counter an emerging public health crisis due to the coronavirus pandemic. These measures have caused dramatic increases in unemployment in the short run, with an expected deepening of the recession in the long run. Some...

Job losers exhibit significant heterogeneity in wealth holdings and in the marginal propensity to consume transitory income. We consider potential sources of this heterogeneity, whether (some of) the unemployed face borrowing constraints, and the implications of this heterogeneity for...

We use direct evidence on credit constraints to study their importance for household consumption growth and for welfare. We distentangle the direct effect on consumption growth of a currently binding credit constraints from the indirect effect of a potentially binding credit constraint which...

We use an unusually rich Canadian survey to examine how post-job-loss behaviour and outcomes vary with age of the job loser. We find that older job losers experience greater post-displacement joblessness, and are less likely to return quickly to satisfactory employment. We show that this...