Financial innovations are a common explanation for the rise in credit card debt and bankruptcies. To evaluate this story, we develop a simple model that incorporates two key frictions: asymmetric information about borrowers' risk of default and a fixed cost of developing each contract lenders offer. Innovations that ameliorate asymmetric information or reduce this fixed cost have large extensive margin effects via the entry of new lending contracts targeted at riskier borrowers. This results in more defaults and borrowing, and increased dispersion of interest rates. Using the Survey of Consumer Finances and Federal Reserve Board interest rate data, we find evidence supporting these predictions. Specifically, the dispersion of credit card interest rates nearly tripled while the “new” cardholders of the late 1980s and 1990s had riskier observable characteristics than existing cardholders. Our calculations suggest that these new cardholders accounted for over 20% of the rise in bank credit card debt and delinquencies between 1989 and 1998.

There has been considerable public debate on the relative merits of alternative consumer bankruptcy rules. The option to discharge one’s debt provides partial insurance against bad luck, but by driving up interest rates makes lifecycle smoothing more difficult. We construct a quantitative model of consumer bankruptcy to address this trade-off. We argue that such a model should have three key feature: a life-cycle component, idiosyncratic earnings uncertainty and expense uncertainty (exogenous negative shocks to household balance sheets). We further show that transitory and persistent earnings shocks have very different implications for evaluating bankruptcy rules – while persistent shocks make bankruptcy option desirable, transitory shocks have the opposite implication. Our findings suggest that the current US bankruptcy system may be desirable for reasonable parameter values.

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)