This paper looks at arrears among US households between 1995 and 2013. It uses household data from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) where arrears occur when a household reports it “sometimes got behind or missed a payment”. The key contribution is that it decomposes the change in...

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...

We investigate the issue of pervasive credit constraints among US households. There is considerable debate about the incidence of constraints and whether the observed low borrowing in some groups of the population arises from low demand or from denial of credit. Using information on unsecured...