Student Loan Forgiveness

We are grateful to Michael Boutros, Sylvain Catherine, Tim De Silva, Caroline Hoxby, Erik Hurst, Adam Looney, Lesley Turner and Michael Weber for helpful discussions and comments as well as seminar participants at NBER Public Economics, NBER Education, Cambridge, the University of Chicago, MIT Sloan, the University of Illinois Gies School of Business, Vanderbilt Owen School of Management, the Tulane Freedman School of Business, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Hong Kong University, the University of Bath School of Management, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, University of Houston Bauer College of Business, CUHK Shenzhen, ABN AMRO Financial Transaction Data conference and City University of Hong Kong. Koustas gratefully acknowledges support from the Becker Friedman Institute (BFI) and the Peter G. Peterson Institute Pandemic Response Policy Research Fund Award. All tables and figures that list TransUnion as a source have statistics calculated (or derived) based on credit data provided by TransUnion, a global information solutions company, through a relationship with the Kilts Center for Marketing at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. TransUnion (the data provider) has the right to review the research before dissemination to ensure it accurately describes TransUnion data, does not disclose confidential information, and does not contain material it deems to be misleading or false regarding TransUnion, TransUnion’s partners, affiliates or customer base, or the consumer lending industry. We also rely on consumer credit data and employment data from a second large credit bureau. Due to legal limitations, including data sharing agreements, we cannot disclose the name of the specific credit bureau. The consumer credit information provided was anonymized and delivered in a format for analytical purposes only. This credit bureau has the right to review the research for legal compliance, but did not comment on the use of the data, analysis, and conclusions drawn from said data. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

• data appendix