Credit Markets, Exemptions, and Households with Nothing to Exempt
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Richard M. Hynes
American bankruptcy law has offered a "fresh start" in every state for over one hundred years. As a result, econometric studies of consumer bankruptcy often focus on one of the few aspects of the law that has varied significantly across time and across states: exemptions. Professors Gropp, Scholz and White published the first article to test the effect of exemptions on credit markets. Consistent with theory, they found that residents of states with larger exemptions pay higher interest rates than those in states with lower exemptions and face an increased probability that they will be denied credit. These effects were most pronounced for poor households. This result is surprising because exemptions only allow a household to keep what it has. The difference between a $100,000 exemption and an exemption with no dollar limit should not matter if the household has little or no assets to exempt. This essay examines alternative explanations for why exemptions appear to have a disproportionate impact on the poor. Unfortunately, however, none of these alternative explanations proves entirely satisfactory.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Article
- Facts on the Ground and Reconciliation of Divergent Consumer Insolvency Philosophies
- Theories of Overindebtedness: Interaction of Structure and Culture
- Conservative Economics and Optimal Consumer Bankruptcy Policy
- The Evolution of Bankruptcy Stigma
- Optimizing Consumer Credit Markets and Bankruptcy Policy
- Bankruptcy Policy in Light of Manipulation in Credit Advertising
- The Value of Home Ownership
- Credit Markets, Exemptions, and Households with Nothing to Exempt
- Velvet Bankruptcy
- Comprehensive Reform of Japanese Personal Insolvency Law
- The Chief Enforcement Officer and Insolvency in Israeli Law
- Personal Bankruptcy in Korea: Challenges and Responses
- Functionalism and Political Economy in the Comparative Study of Consumer Insolvency: An Unfinished Story from England and Wales
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Article
- Facts on the Ground and Reconciliation of Divergent Consumer Insolvency Philosophies
- Theories of Overindebtedness: Interaction of Structure and Culture
- Conservative Economics and Optimal Consumer Bankruptcy Policy
- The Evolution of Bankruptcy Stigma
- Optimizing Consumer Credit Markets and Bankruptcy Policy
- Bankruptcy Policy in Light of Manipulation in Credit Advertising
- The Value of Home Ownership
- Credit Markets, Exemptions, and Households with Nothing to Exempt
- Velvet Bankruptcy
- Comprehensive Reform of Japanese Personal Insolvency Law
- The Chief Enforcement Officer and Insolvency in Israeli Law
- Personal Bankruptcy in Korea: Challenges and Responses
- Functionalism and Political Economy in the Comparative Study of Consumer Insolvency: An Unfinished Story from England and Wales
