This paper estimates the effect of Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection on post-filing financial outcomes using a new dataset linking bankruptcy filings to credit bureau records. Our empirical strategy uses the leniency of randomly-assigned judges as an instrument for Chapter 13 protection. Over the...

Credit reports are used in nearly all consumer lending decisions and, increasingly, in hiring decisions in the labor market, but the impact of a bad credit report is largely unknown. We study the effects of credit reports on financial and labor market outcomes using a difference-in-differences...

This paper tests for bias in consumer lending decisions using administrative data from a high-cost lender in the United Kingdom. We motivate our analysis using a simple model of bias in lending, which predicts that profits should be identical for loan applicants from different groups at the...

We study the financial and labor market impacts of bad credit reports. Using difference-in-differences variation from the staggered removal of bankruptcy flags, we show that bankruptcy flag removal leads to economically large increases in credit limits and borrowing. Using administrative tax...

We study the financial and labor market impacts of bad credit reports. Using difference-in-differences variation from the staggered removal of bankruptcy flags, we show that bankruptcy flag removal leads to economically large increases in credit limits and borrowing. Using administrative tax...

This paper argues that the debt forgiveness provided by the U.S. consumer bankruptcy system helped stabilize employment levels during the Great Recession. We document that over this period, states with more generous bankruptcy exemptions had significantly smaller declines in non-tradable...

Charter schools were developed, in part, to serve as an R&D engine for traditional public schools, resulting in a wide variety of school strategies and outcomes. In this paper, we collect unparalleled data on the inner-workings of 35 charter schools and correlate these data with credible...

Nearly one million American youth have participated in service programs such as Peace Corps and Teach For America. This paper provides the first causal estimate of the impact of service programs on those who serve, using data from a web-based survey of former Teach For America applicants. We...

Publicly funded exam schools educate many of the world's most talented students. These schools typically contain higher achieving peers, more rigorous instruction, and additional resources compared to regular public schools. This paper uses a sharp discontinuity in the admissions process at...