Bankruptcy and Debt Portfolios

Winfried Koeniger and Thomas Hintermaier

No 348, 2009 Meeting Papers from Society for Economic Dynamics

Abstract: We use a heterogeneous-agent model, in which labor income is risky and markets are incomplete, to analyze consumer debt portfolios of secured and unsecured debt in the US. Compared with previous research, we emphasize the role of durables which not only generate utility but also serve as debt collateral. This allows a meaningful joint analysis of secured and unsecured debt and introduces endogenous bankruptcy costs: durables need to be sold to service secured debt in bankruptcy procedures which implies forgone durable utility since adjusting durables is costly. We solve the model numerically and apply it to understand bankruptcy and consumer debt portfolios in the US and their evolution over time.

Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://red-files-public.s3.amazonaws.com/meetpapers/2009/paper_348.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:red:sed009:348

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2009 Meeting Papers from Society for Economic Dynamics Society for Economic Dynamics Marina Azzimonti Department of Economics Stonybrook University 10 Nicolls Road Stonybrook NY 11790 USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christian Zimmermann ().