Replication data for: Consumer Bankruptcy: A Fresh Start

Consumer bankruptcy provides partial insurance against bad luck, but, by driving up interest rates, makes life-cycle smoothing more difficult. We argue that to assess this trade-off one needs a quantitative model of consumer bankruptcy with three key features: life-cycle component, idiosyncratic earnings uncertainty, and expense uncertainty (exogenous negative shocks to household balance sheets). We find that transitory and persistent earnings shocks have very different implications for evaluating bankruptcy rules. More persistent shocks make the bankruptcy option more desirable. Larger transitory shocks have the opposite effect. Our findings suggest the current US bankruptcy system may be desirable for reasonable parameter values. (JEL D14, D91, K35)

消费者破产在某种程度上为不幸事件提供了部分保障，然而，它通过推高利率，使得生命周期内收入平滑化变得更加困难。我们主张，为了评估这一权衡，需要构建一个包含三个关键特征的消费者破产定量模型：生命周期因素、个体收入不确定性以及支出不确定性（家庭资产负债表的外生负面冲击）。我们发现，暂时性和持续性的收入冲击对破产规则的评估具有截然不同的影响。更持久的冲击使得破产选择更为可取。较大的暂时性冲击则产生相反的效果。我们的研究结果表明，在合理的参数值下，当前的美国破产体系可能是可取的。（JEL D14, D91, K35）