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I study the implications of two major debt-relief policies in the United States: the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) and the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP). To do so, I develop a model of housing and default that includes relevant dimensions of credit-market policy and captures rich heterogeneity in household balance sheets. The model also explains the observed cross-state variation in consumer default rates. I find that BAPCPA significantly reduced bankruptcy rates, but increased foreclosure rates when house prices fell. HARP reduced foreclosures by 1 percentage point and provided substantial welfare gains to households with high loan-to-value mortgages. (JEL D14, K35, R31)

In the aftermath of the Great Recession, millions of Americans received extensions to their unemployment benefits – in some cases extending them to 99 weeks. At the end of 2013, these extended benefits expired, leading many to call on Congress to reauthorize their extension. But does extending unemployment benefits make sound economic sense? In new research, Stanislav Rabinovich and Kurt Mitman argue that the government was correct to rein in the duration of benefits. They write that reducing the duration of benefits helps the unemployed to find jobs faster, and leads to much less volatile unemployment.