We analyze the information content of the digital footprint – information that people leave online simply by accessing or registering on a website – for predicting consumer default. Using more than 250,000 observations, we show that even simple, easily accessible variables from the digital...

We analyze the information content of the digital footprint – information that people leave online simply by accessing or registering on a website – for predicting consumer default. Using more than 250,000 observations, we show that even simple, easily accessible variables from the digital...

We analyze the information content of the digital footprint – information that people leave online simply by accessing or registering on a website – for predicting consumer default. We show that even simple, easily accessible variables from the digital footprint match the information content...

We find that student debt is negatively related to the propensity to start a firm, particularly larger and more successful ventures. An exogenous change due to the Higher Education Amendments of 1998, which made student debt completely non-dischargeable through personal bankruptcy, reduced the...

Using exogenous changes in the personal bankruptcy treatment of student loans as well as the level of student debt, we find that student debt has a negative effect on household retirement savings. This negative relation is present for younger and older individuals, and is larger for the latter...

Using household data from the Survey of Consumer Finances, we find that student debt negatively affects future investment in high return, risky financial assets, utilizing exogenous shocks to student loans and its bankruptcy treatment, to establish causation. We show that student loans...