Working papers

Who supports young workers through job loss? with Rachel Dwyer, Stephanie Moulton, and Sungmin Park, October 2024, updated July 2025.

How Does the Death of a Partner During the COVID-19 Pandemic Affect the Economic Security of the Surviving Older Adult?  Evidence From Credit Panel and Labor Force Participation Data, with Stephanie Moulton, Donald Haurin, and Cazilia Loibl, September 2023.

US Families' Changing Responses to College Costs: Less Borrowing, More Co-residence, with Zachary Bleemer, Donghoon Lee, and Wilbert van der Klaauw, this version October 2024.

"Debt Repayment through Job Loss and Benefit Exhaustion: Evidence from Administrative Data," with Sunhee Yu.

Work in progress

"Credit Sharing: A Hidden Mechanism in Transfers of Economic Advantage," with Rachel Dwyer, Stephanie Moulton, and Sungmin Park.

"How do Ohio couples weather job loss? Added workers versus financial strategies," with Guanting Yi.

"Unequal Recoveries: Job Loss and its Differential Impact on Same-Sex Partnered Families," with Guanting Yi.

Selected publications

Personal Bankruptcy Protection and Household Debt, with Felipe Severino and Rajashri Chakrabarti, forthcoming, Review of Financial Studies.

Family Law Effects on Divorce, Fertility, and Child Investment, with Christopher Flinn and Jo Mullins, forthcoming, Journal of Labor Economics.

Inequality in high-cost borrowing and unemployment insurance generosity in US states during the COVID-19 pandemic, with Lawrence Berger, Rachel Dwyer, Jason Houle, Stephanie Moulton, and J. Michael Collins, Nature Human Behavior 8, 1676–1688 (2024).

Economics impacts of the COVID-19 crisis: Evidence from credit and debt of older adults, with J. Michael Collins and Stephanie Moulton, Journal of Pension Economics and Finance 2022, 1-19.

Echoes of Rising Tuition in Students' Borrowing, Educational Attainment, and Homeownership in Post-Recession America, with Zach Bleemer, Donghoon Lee, Katherine Strair, and Wilbert van der Klaauw, Journal of Urban Economics v. 122, March 2021.

The Graying of American Debt, with Zachary Bleemer, Donghoon Lee, and Wilbert van der Klaauw. In O.S. Mitchell and A. Lusardi (eds.), Remaking Retirement: Debt in an Aging Economy. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press,  2020. 

“Financial Education and the Debt Behavior of the Young,” with John Grigsby, Wilbert van der Klaauw, Jaya Wen, and Basit Zafar, Review of Financial Studies, 29(9): 2490-2522, September 2016.

“Do Referrals Lead to Better Matches? Evidence from a Firm’s Employee Referral System,” with Elizabeth Setren and Giorgio Topa, Journal of Labor Economics, 34(1): 161-209, January 2016.

“Do We Know What We Owe? A Comparison of Borrower- and Lender-Reported Consumer Debt,” with Andrew Haughwout, Donghoon Lee and Wilbert van der Klaauw, Economic Policy Review, 21(1): 19-44, October 2015. 

“The Impact of Housing Markets on Consumer Debt: Credit Report Evidence from 1999 to 2012,” with Sarah Stein and Basit Zafar, Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, 47(S1): 175-213, March/April 2015.

 “A New Test of Borrowing Constraints for Education,” with John Karl Scholz and Ananth Seshadri, Review of Economic Studies, 79(2): 511-538, April 2012.

“Real-Time Search in the Laboratory and the Market,” with Christopher J. Flinn and Andrew Schotter, American Economic Review, 101(2), April 2011.