IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedpwp/15-40.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Who is screened out of social insurance programs by entry barriers? Evidence from consumer bankruptcies

Author

Listed:
  • Vyacheslav Mikhed
  • Barry Scholnick

Abstract

Entry barriers into social insurance programs will be effective screening devices if they cause only those individuals receiving higher benefits from a program to participate in that program. We find evidence for this by using plausibly exogenous variations in travel-related entry costs into the Canadian consumer bankruptcy system. Using detailed balance sheet and travel data, we find that higher travel-related entry costs reduce bankruptcies from individuals with lower financial benefits of bankruptcy (unsecured debt discharged, minus secured assets forgone). When compared across filers, each extra kilometer traveled to access the bankruptcy system requires approximately $11 more in financial benefits from bankruptcy. {{p}}Supersedes Working Paper 14-18

Suggested Citation

  • Vyacheslav Mikhed & Barry Scholnick, 2015. "Who is screened out of social insurance programs by entry barriers? Evidence from consumer bankruptcies," Working Papers 15-40, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedpwp:15-40
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/frbp/assets/working-papers/2015/wp15-40.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Will Dobbie & Jae Song, 2015. "Debt Relief and Debtor Outcomes: Measuring the Effects of Consumer Bankruptcy Protection," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(3), pages 1272-1311, March.
    2. Gautier, Pieter A. & Zenou, Yves, 2010. "Car ownership and the labor market of ethnic minorities," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(3), pages 392-403, May.
    3. Nichols, Albert L & Zeckhauser, Richard J, 1982. "Targeting Transfers through Restrictions on Recipients," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(2), pages 372-377, May.
    4. Scott Fay & Erik Hurst & Michelle J. White, 2002. "The Household Bankruptcy Decision," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(3), pages 706-718, June.
    5. Igor Livshits & James MacGee & Michèle Tertilt, 2010. "Accounting for the Rise in Consumer Bankruptcies," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(2), pages 165-193, April.
    6. Scott Hankins & Mark Hoekstra & Paige Marta Skiba, 2011. "The Ticket to Easy Street? The Financial Consequences of Winning the Lottery," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(3), pages 961-969, August.
    7. Robert A. Moffitt, 2003. "Means-Tested Transfer Programs in the United States," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number moff03-1, May.
    8. Annamaria Lusardi, 2012. "Numeracy, financial literacy, and financial decision-making," NBER Working Papers 17821, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Wenli Li & Michelle J. White & Ning Zhu, 2011. "Did Bankruptcy Reform Cause Mortgage Defaults to Rise?," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 3(4), pages 123-147, November.
    10. David B. Gross, 2002. "An Empirical Analysis of Personal Bankruptcy and Delinquency," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 15(1), pages 319-347, March.
    11. Henrik Jacobsen Kleven & Wojciech Kopczuk, 2011. "Transfer Program Complexity and the Take-Up of Social Benefits," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 3(1), pages 54-90, February.
    12. Tal Gross & Matthew J. Notowidigdo & Jialan Wang, 2014. "Liquidity Constraints and Consumer Bankruptcy: Evidence from Tax Rebates," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 96(3), pages 431-443, July.
    13. Neale Mahoney, 2015. "Bankruptcy as Implicit Health Insurance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(2), pages 710-746, February.
    14. Michelle J. White, 2007. "Bankruptcy Reform and Credit Cards," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(4), pages 175-200, Fall.
    15. Katja Seim & Joel Waldfogel, 2013. "Public Monopoly and Economic Efficiency: Evidence from the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board's Entry Decisions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(2), pages 831-862, April.
    16. Michelle J. White, 2011. "Corporate and Personal Bankruptcy Law," NBER Working Papers 17237, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Robert A. Moffitt, 2003. "Introduction to "Means-Tested Transfer Programs in the United States"," NBER Chapters, in: Means-Tested Transfer Programs in the United States, pages 1-14, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Baum, Charles L., 2009. "The effects of vehicle ownership on employment," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(3), pages 151-163, November.
    19. Michelle J. White, 2007. "Bankruptcy Reform and Credit Cards," NBER Working Papers 13265, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Vyacheslav Mikhed & Barry Scholnick, 2014. "Financial benefits, travel costs, and bankruptcy," Working Papers 14-18, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    2. Barry Scholnick & Hyungsuk Byun, 2016. "Do Slot Machines Cause Bankruptcy? A Regulatory Natural Experiment with Exogenous Changes to Slot Locations," ERSA conference papers ersa16p607, European Regional Science Association.
    3. Hyungsuk Byun & Barry Scholnick, 2017. "Spatial Commitment Devices and Addictive Goods: Evidence from the Removal of Slot Machines from Bars," Working Papers 17-34, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    4. Danisewicz, Piotr & Elard, Ilaf, 2023. "The real effects of financial technology: Marketplace lending and personal bankruptcy," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    5. Gan, Li & Hernandez, Manuel A. & Zhang, Shuoxun, 2021. "Insurance or deliberate use of the bankruptcy law for financial gain? Testing for heterogeneous filing behaviors in the United States," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 105(C).
    6. Vyacheslav Mikhed & Barry Scholnick, 2016. "The Causes of Household Bankruptcy: The Interaction of Income Shocks and Balance Sheets," Working Papers 16-19, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    7. Igor Livshits, 2015. "Recent Developments In Consumer Credit And Default Literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 594-613, September.
    8. Brian Jonghwan Lee, 2024. "Bankruptcy Lawyers and Credit Recovery," Working Papers 24-10, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    9. Eduardo Dávila, 2020. "Using Elasticities to Derive Optimal Bankruptcy Exemptions," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 87(2), pages 870-913.
    10. Will Dobbie & Paul Goldsmith‐Pinkham & Neale Mahoney & Jae Song, 2020. "Bad Credit, No Problem? Credit and Labor Market Consequences of Bad Credit Reports," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 75(5), pages 2377-2419, October.
    11. Charles Grant, 2021. "The Evolution of Arrears among US Households 1995–2013," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 14(2), pages 1-40, January.
    12. Ethan Cohen-Cole & Burcu Duygan-Bump, 2008. "Household bankruptcy decision: the role of social stigma vs. information sharing," Supervisory Research and Analysis Working Papers QAU08-6, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    13. Jason Allen & Kiana Basiri, 2016. "The Impact of Bankruptcy Reform on Insolvency Choice and Consumer Credit," Staff Working Papers 16-26, Bank of Canada.
    14. Song Han & Geng Li, 2011. "Household Borrowing after Personal Bankruptcy," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43, pages 491-517, March.
    15. Ethan Cohen-Cole, 2009. "The option value of consumer bankruptcy," Supervisory Research and Analysis Working Papers QAU09-1, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    16. Song Han & Benjamin J. Keys & Geng Li, 2011. "Credit supply to personal bankruptcy filers: evidence from credit card mailings," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2011-29, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    17. Lee, Ho-Seok & Lim, Byung Hwa, 2023. "Personal bankruptcy and post-bankruptcy liquidity constraint," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    18. Nadja König, 2016. "Household Debt and Macrodynamics - How do Income Distribution and Insolvency Regulations interact?," Macroeconomics and Finance Series 201603, University of Hamburg, Department of Socioeconomics.
    19. Rema Hanna & Benjamin A. Olken, 2018. "Universal Basic Incomes vs. Targeted Transfers: Anti-Poverty Programs in Developing Countries," NBER Working Papers 24939, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Florian Exler & Michéle Tertilt, 2020. "Consumer Debt and default: A Macro Perspective," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2020_153v2, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Social insurance; Consumer bankruptcy; Filing costs; Entry barriers;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors
    • G33 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Bankruptcy; Liquidation
    • K35 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Personal Bankruptcy Law

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedpwp:15-40. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Beth Paul (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbphus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.