tailieunhanh - Economic Policy Research Institute EPRI Working Paper Series

However, their empirical observations can also be interpreted at hinting at a much more fundamental problem with the causality between savings and investment proclaimed by textbook theory. This thought is not new. The causation between saving and investment has long been disputed and not yet been solved. 4 Based on the works of Keynes and Schumpeter, some economists argue that the causation does not run from saving to investment, but rather from investment to saving. 5 According to them, an autonomous increase in investment can in fact create the savings necessary to finance this investment on a macroeconomic level. . | Costly Contracts and Consumer Credit by Igor Livshits James MacGee and Michèle Tertilt Working Paper 2011-1 June 2011 Economic Policy Research Institute EPRI Working Paper Series Department of Economics Department of Political Science Social Science Centre The University of Western Ontario London Ontario N6A 5C2 Canada This working paper is available as a downloadable pdf file on our website http economi centres epri Costly Contracts and Consumer Credit Igor Livshits James MacGee University of Western Ontario BEROC University of Western Ontario Michele Tertilt University of Mannheim Stanford University NBER and CEPR June 20 2011 Abstract Financial innovations are a common explanation of the rise in consumer credit and bankruptcies. To evaluate this story we develop a simple model that incorporates two key frictions asymmetric information about borrowers risk of default and a fixed cost to create each contract offered by lenders. Innovations which reduce the fixed cost or ameliorate asymmetric information have large extensive margin effects via the entry of new lending contracts targeted at riskier borrowers. This results in more defaults and borrowing as well as increased dispersion of interest rates. Using the Survey of Consumer Finance and interest rate data collected by the Board of Governors we find evidence supporting these predictions as the dispersion of credit card interest rates nearly tripled and the share of credit card debt of lower income households nearly doubled. Keywords Consumer Credit Endogenous Financial Contracts Bankruptcy. JEL Classifications E21 E49 G18 K35 Corresponding Author Michele Tertilt Department of Economics University of Mannheim Germany e-mail tertilt@. We thank Kartik Athreya and Richard Rogerson as well as seminar participants at Alberta Arizona State British Columbia Brock Carleton NYU Pennsylvania State Rochester Simon Fraser UCSD UCSB USC Windsor Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond Federal Reserve Bank of