OIL PRICE CRISIS AND BANKRUPTCY RISK

The Price of Oil Risk

We solve a Pareto risk-sharing problem with heterogeneous agents with recursive utility over multiple goods. We use this optimal consumption allocation to derive a pricing kernel and the price of oil and related futures contracts. This gives us insight into the dynamics of risk premia in commodity markets for oil. As an example, in a calibrated version of our model we show how rising oil prices...

Bankruptcy Reform’s Role in the Mortgage Crisis

BANKRUPTCY REFORM’S ROLE IN THE MORTGAGE CRISIS This paper argues that the U.S. bankruptcy reform of 2005 played an important role in the mortgage crisis and the current recession. When debtors file for bankruptcy, credit card debt and other types of debt are discharged — thus loosening debtors’ budget constraints. Homeowners in financial distress can therefore use bankruptcy to avoid losing th...

Bankruptcy and risk allocation.

Bankruptcy : past Puzzles , Recent Reforms , and the Mortgage Crisis

This paper discusses four bankruptcy-related policy issues. First, what is the economic rationale for having a bankruptcy procedure at all and what defines an economically efficient bankruptcy procedure? Second, why did the number of U.S. bankruptcy filings increase so dramatically between 1980 and 2005? Third, a major bankruptcy reform went into effect in the U.S. in 2005—what did it do and ho...

Risk Management: Evidence from Oil Price Hedging in Highway Procurement

There is little empirical evidence about risk management heterogeneity across firm types. I evaluate a policy that shifts oil price risk in highway procurement from the private sector to the government, reducing the cost of hedging to zero. In a tripledifferences design using data from Kansas and Iowa, I show that firms value hedging oil price risk between the auction and commencement of work. ...