Little is known about the motivations and outcomes of sellers in remunerated markets for human materials. We exploit dramatic growth in the U.S. blood plasma industry to shed light on the sellers of plasma. Sellers tend to be young and liquidity-constrained with low incomes and limited access to traditional credit. Plasma centers absorb demand for nontraditional credit. After a plasma center opens nearby, demand for payday loans falls by over 13% among young borrowers. Meanwhile, foot traffic increases by over 4% at nearby stores, suggesting that constrained households use plasma markets to smooth consumption without appealing to high-cost debt.

We develop an empirically based simulation study to test two types of policies designed to control systemic risk: preventive policies targeting capital requirements and mitigation policies targeting default resolution. We find that capital buffers reduce both the number of defaults and the resulting losses. The loss reduction benefit increases as the magnitude of adverse shocks becomes higher. We find that a simple branch-breakup resolution strategy reduces the loss borne by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The mitigation effect becomes higher as the fraction of assets resolved through auctions and auction competitiveness increase.