We investigate how the use of bankruptcy as an implicit health insurance varies across households, focusing on heterogeneity by asset holdings, race, marital status, and educational attainment. Using a difference-in-differences design based on the 2005 bankruptcy reform, we find that the reform...

How borrowers respond to future changes in the interest rate on their debt matters for the transmission of monetary policy and for household financial stability. Combining bank data, a letter RCT, and a survey, we study this question in the context of the German mortgage market, where since 2022...

We study the spillover effects of cognitive decline in one member of a coupled household on the financial outcomes of their partner and assess how "own" and spillover effects are moderated by the structure of household financial decision-making. We use a large, nationally representative...

Divergent trends in income and consumption inequality - with the first increasing substantially more than the latter - are an established, stylized fact for the US economy in the last decades. The same time period also experienced a steady increase in household debt, plausibly not independent...

Monetary policy impacts consumer spending via the effect of interest rate changes on credit card borrowing. Using supervisory account-level spending and balance data, we estimate that a 1 percentage point increase in the interest rate reduces credit card spending by nearly 9 percent and...

This paper examines the Black-White pay gap in the United States from 1989 to 2024 using quarterly data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Reserve's Distributional Financial Accounts. Building on existing political economy research, which suggests that personal debt reduces...

Subjective wellbeing is the term used to describe an individual's satisfaction with their life and standard of living. The research in this area is challenging because it is a subjective expression of the respondent's feelings, and individuals may have different ideas or preferences. On the...

We study heterogeneity in households' credit across nine European countries (Belgium, Spain, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, and Slovakia) during 2022-2024 using granular credit register data. We first document substantial between- and within-country variation in mortgage...

Many states have capped consumer loan interest rates to protect households from high-cost lenders. Using triple-difference and event study analysis, we investigate how these usury limits affect the availability and allocation of credit across households. Consistent with standard price theory, we...

A recurring question in the mortgage default literature is why underwater default is rare relative to model predictions. We find that one answer is miscalibration of flow payoffs. We build a novel, detailed quantitative model of mortgage default and find that realistic rent dynamics plus mild...

Informal borrowing from family and friends suffers from the lack of formal agreement and can lead to severe consequences. Self-control theory suggest some strategies to improve the saving tendencies which can reduce this type of borrowing. To examining which factors that can enhance these...

FinTech-based lending has rapidly expanded in emerging economies, offering convenience and inclusion but also raising concerns about over-indebtedness. In Indonesia, the surge of digital loans has been accompanied by growing signs of risky borrowing behavior, including late payments, high...

We study heterogeneity in households' credit across nine European countries (Belgium, Spain, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, and Slovakia) during 2022-2024 using granular credit register data. We first document substantial between- and within-country variation in mortgage...

Household sector over-indebtedness has been a critical issue in Thailand in recent years. This paper starts with a summary of the deleveraging measures implemented so far in Thailand, and then presents four country case studies (Brazil, Hungary, Korea, and Malaysia), with a focus on the measures...

Countries around the world are introducing or improving their personal insolvency regimes, but frequently the effects of these reforms are not evaluated, and the reforms themselves are not supported by adequate data analysis. This paper proposes the establishment and implementation of data...

Institutional investors increasingly value alternative assets in strategic asset allocation, with private debt emerging as a key asset class. However, its shortage of market history has hindered the development of standardized proxy benchmarks. For that, many institutional investors still do not...

Using a monthly panel dataset of individuals' debt, we show that house price changes can explain a significant fraction of personal debt composition dynamics. We exploit the variation in local house price growth as shocks to homeowners' housing wealth to study the consequential adjustment of...

Large-scale debt forbearance is a key policy tool during crises, yet targeting is challenging due to information asymmetries. Using transaction-level data from a Portuguese bank during COVID-19, we find that financially fragile households are more likely to enter forbearance, irrespective of...

What stimulus payments replicate the consumption effect of a desired (but potentially infeasible) interest rate cut? Using granular full-population administrative data, we estimate consumption responses to interest rate changes via adjustable-rate mortgage resets and lump-sum cash windfalls from...

This study investigates the determinants of household debt-to- GDP across ten economies, comprising both developed and developing countries, spanning the period from 2000 to 2023. Employing a panel econometric framework, including Fixed Effects, Random Effects, and Panel ARDL models, the...

Using linked employer-employee data combined with administrative data on debt enforcement, we analyze the impact of job loss on debt problems in Finland, where even 50% of income may be subject to wage garnishment for up to 25 years. Our results show that job loss, defined by plant closures and...

Household indebtedness in Korea has surged persistently during 2003-2022. Low interest rates, coupled with escalating housing prices, are the key drivers of growing household debt. In this context, monetary tightening may play an opposite role to conventional monetary policy. Moreover,...