Credit without Commitment: The Implications of the Bankruptcy Law and the Determination of Public Debt

从有限承诺的角度来看，这个项目是关于信贷的。这部作品的主要主题是，虽然诱导债务人履行承诺的手段有限，但发放的信贷数额相当大，违约的情况无处不在。这些主题将这个项目的两个部分结合在一起。第一部分涉及私人信贷和美国破产法的明确考虑，该法典基本上是根据需要给予债权人保护。该提案包括发展理论来分析这样一个环境，在这个环境中，法律制度是美国的，并且所有代理人(家庭、公司)都是理性行事的。值得注意的是两个特征：不可观察到的消费者异质性(“好的”和“坏的”借款人)和旨在限制不良贷款危害的合同；与现有的有限承诺理论形成对比的是，在这里违约的主要是收入不良冲击的消费者。这一理论被应用于对政策变化进行量化分析，这反过来又要求该模型能够同时考虑观察到的信贷和违约金额。该项目的另一部分涉及公共债务，分析了政府无法承诺未来政策的环境。这项工作产生了对给定宪法框架下的政策选择的预测。从经济政策设计的角度来看，这两个项目的答案都非常重要。第一部分分析了破产法的替代设计，包括美国国会最近讨论的一些改革，第二部分将有助于理解连续几届政府之间的互动，从而有助于理解宪法对预算赤字和公共债务限制的影响。在美国，《破产法》保障公民(宪法第一条第8节承认)申请免受债权人保护的权利。这项权利在经济学中大多被忽视，但在美国，每年有100多万人申请破产，这一权利的行使非常频繁。拟议的工作在理论上和数量上研究了无担保消费信贷行业的环境，具有以下特征：信贷供应商以给定的利率吸收存款，并通过一系列信用水平和相关利率向家庭提供贷款。贷款行业竞争激烈，可以自由进入，借款人拥有违约选择权，在过程和结果上都类似于根据美国破产法第7章申请破产。特别重要的是对家庭拥有的信用评级进行分析，并在家庭采取储蓄和违约行动时更新信用评级。家庭的信用评分或信用评级是一个越来越重要的特征，因为它被用于评估保险风险等各种原因。债务管理的研究一直围绕着最优概念展开，这些概念假定政府对未来政策的承诺。在缺乏这种承诺的情况下，财政政策不能得到很好的理解，因为最优政策不是时间一致的。特别是，一个规范模型表明，在承诺的情况下，政府总是在第一个时期增加债务，这表明在没有承诺的情况下，债务水平会不断上升。然而，目前的项目揭示了一个在没有承诺的情况下进行债务管理的一般机制，这意味着，尽管政府债务最初往往会增加，但债务扩张必须有一个限度。原因是在这些情况下内生和自然产生的非凸性。更广泛的影响在美国法律体系框架内理解信贷是各种问题的关键因素，例如信贷紧缩在经济衰退中如何运作，以及获得信贷的不同机会如何塑造人们终身的机会。此外，国会正在考虑修订《破产法》。可以用这一模型分析现行准则的替代方案的含义，包括对个人信用评分系统如何运作的规定。对公共债务的分析可能会影响对平衡预算修正案等问题的讨论。

This project is about credit from the point of view of limited commitment. The main themes that inform the work are that while there are limited means to induce debtors to act as they promised, the amount of credit issued is quite large, and the instances of default are pervasive. These themes unite the two parts of this project. The first part deals with private credit and the explicit consideration of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code that grants protection from creditors essentially on demand. The proposal includes the development of theory to analyze an environment where the legal system is that of the U.S., and where all agents (households, firms) act rationally. Two features are noteworthy: unobservable consumer heterogeneity ("good" and "bad" borrowers) and contracts designed to limit the harm from taking on bad loans; and those who default here are mainly consumers with bad income shocks, in contrast with existing limited-commitment theory. This theory is applied to analyze policy changes quantitatively which in turn requires that the model is capable of accounting simultaneously for the observed amounts of credit and of default. The other part of the project deals with public debt, analyzing an environment where governments cannot commit to future policies. The work yields predictions over policy choices given a constitutional framework. The answers from both projects are very important from the point of view of the design of economic policy. In the first part alternative designs of the Bankruptcy Code are analyzed, including some reforms that have been recently discussed in the U.S. Congress, while the second part will help understand the interactions between consecutive governments and hence the implications of Constitutional limits on budget deficits and public debt. In the U.S. the Bankruptcy Code guarantees the right of citizens (recognized in Article I, section 8, of the Constitution) to file for protection against creditors. This right is mostly ignored in Economics, yet it is exercised very frequently as more than one million people file for bankruptcy in the U.S. each year. The proposed work studies, theoretically and quantitatively, an environment with an unsecured consumer credit industry with the following features: Credit-suppliers take deposits at a given interest rate and offer loans to households via a menu of credit levels and associated interest rates. The loan industry is competitive, with free entry, and borrowers have a default option that resembles, in process and consequence, a bankruptcy filing under Chapter 7 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. Of special importance is the analysis of the credit rating that households have and that is updated when households take savings and default actions. The credit score or credit rating of households is an increasingly important feature as it is used for a variety of reasons such as assessing insurance risks.The study of debt management has been centered around notions of optimality which assume the commitment of governments to future policies. In the absence of such commitment, fiscal policy is not well understood since optimal policy is not time-consistent. In particular, a canonical model shows that under commitment, the government always increases its debt in the first period, suggesting ever-increasing debt levels when there is no commitment. However, the present project is uncovering a general mechanism underlying debt management without commitment which impliesthat although government debt will tend to increase initially, there must be a limit to debtexpansion. The reason is a non-convexity that arises endogenously and naturally in these contexts.The Broader ImpactsUnderstanding credit within the framework of the U.S. legal system is a crucial ingredient for various questions such as how credit crunches operate in recessions and how differential access to credit shape people's life-long opportunities. Moreover, Congress is considering the revision of the Bankruptcy Code. The implications of the alternatives to the current Code can be analyzed with this model, including regulations of how the system of credit scores of people operate. The analysis of public debt may shape the discussions over such issues as balanced-budget amendments.