@techreport{NBERw5653,
 title = "Personal Bankruptcy and Credit Supply and Demand",
 author = "Reint Gropp and John Karl Scholz and Michelle White",
 institution = "National Bureau of Economic Research",
 type = "Working Paper",
 series = "Working Paper Series",
 number = "5653",
 year = "1996",
 month = "July",
 URL = "http://www.nber.org/papers/w5653",
 abstract = {This paper examines how personal bankruptcy and bankruptcy exemptions affect the supply and demand for credit.  While generous state-level bankruptcy exemptions are probably viewed by most policymakers as benefitting less-well-off borrowers, our results using data from the 1983 Survey of Consumer Finances suggest they increase the amount of credit held by high-asset households and reduce the availability and amount of credit to low-asset households, conditioning on observable characteristics. We also find evidence that interest rates on automobile loans for low-asset households are higher in high exemption states.  Thus, bankruptcy exemptions redistribute credit toward borrowers with high assets.},
}