The economics of personal bankruptcy

This thesis examines the effect of bankruptcy law on consumer borrowing and welfare. The thesis consists of four theoretical chapters and two empirical chapters. Chapter 1 presents a simple model of consumer borrowing where the repayment of debt is governed by a bankruptcy law which allows a consumer to protect income below a given exemption level from creditors. Increasing bankruptcy exemption levels are found to increase borrowing and to increase consumer welfare so long as the consumer is borrowing less than the maximum amount possible. If consumers are borrowing the maximum amount possible, increasing exemption amounts increases credit constraints and decreases borrowing. Consumer welfare is maximized at the point where the marginal benefit the amount of insurance provided by the bankruptcy regime equals the marginal cost to reducing borrowing. Chapter 2 expands the model described in chapter 1 to include consumers who differ as to either their demand for credit or their ability to repay loans. The optimal exemption level is found to occur where the marginal cost due to increasing credit constraints to consumers with a higher demand for credit or a lower ability to repay is balanced against the increased insurance benefit provided to other borrowers.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Economics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2004

Author dc:creator

• Link, Frederick, 1975-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Peter Diamond and Jonathan Gruber.

• Economics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/29428

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/29428