Credit, bankruptcy, and aggregate fluctuations

Makoto Nakajima (makoto.nakajima@gmail.com) and José-Víctor Ríos-Rull
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: José-Víctor Ríos-Rull

No 14-31, Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia

Abstract: We ask two questions related to how access to credit affects the nature of business cycles. First, does the standard theory of unsecured credit account for the high volatility and procyclicality of credit and the high volatility and countercyclicality of bankruptcy filings found in U.S. data? Yes, it does, but only if we explicitly model recessions as displaying countercyclical earnings risk (i.e., rather than having all households fare slightly worse than normal during recessions, we ensure that more households than normal fare very poorly). Second, does access to credit smooth aggregate consumption or aggregate hours worked, and if so, does it matter with respect to the nature of business cycles? No, it does not; in fact, consumption is 20 percent more volatile when credit is available. The interest rate premia increase in recessions because of higher bankruptcy risk discouraging households from using credit. This finding contradicts the intuition that access to credit helps households to smooth their consumption.

Keywords: Consumer credit; Default; Bankruptcy; Debt; Business cycle; Heterogeneous agents; Incomplete markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D91 E21 E32 E44 K35 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2014-10-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban, nep-dge and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Credit, Bankruptcy, and Aggregate Fluctuations (2019)
Working Paper: Credit, Bankruptcy, and Aggregate Fluctuations (2015)
Working Paper: Credit, Bankruptcy, and Aggregate Fluctuations (2014)
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