Marieke Bos

February 2026, New Working Papers:

• ”Employee Debt Overhang and Firm Performance”, together with Ramin Bahai and Paula Roth, Abstract
  What are the consequences for firms when an employee experiences financial distress? We study wage garnishment, a debt-enforcement mechanism that seizes all earnings above a protected subsistence threshold. Exploiting quasi-random variation in the timing of enforcement, we find that garnished workers reduce labor supply, bunching earnings at the protected threshold: monthly earnings fall by 8%, unemployment and sickness absence rise, and promotions decline by 27%. Consistent with an incentive channel, effects are concentrated among workers whose debt is too large to repay realistically through garnishment. Coworkers absorb part of the workload, working longer hours. The added workload carries a health cost: coworkers’ sick leave, hospital admissions, and prescriptions for anxiety and depression medication rise. Firms employing garnished workers experience persistent declines in value added and sales, and a large increase in exit probability; these effects are most visible among small firms where a single garnished worker represents a large share of productive capacity. To separate labor demand from supply effects, we examine a 2022 reform that raised protected thresholds without changing the information environment for employers: distorted work incentives, not stigma, drive these effects. Employee financial distress is, ultimately, a firm-level shock.
• ”Financing the Transition: How Green Loans Reshape Household Finances and Emissions” together with Navid Akbaripour, Ehsan Mahdikhani, and Arna Olafsson Abstract
  Using transaction-level bank data, we exploit the introduction of a discounted green car loan and random lottery windfalls as natural experiments to identify how electric-vehicle (EV) adoption financed by green loans affects household finances and emissions. Households that finance an EV with a green loan reduce gasoline spending by about 30% and raise electricity spending by about 26%, cutting total vehicle energy costs by roughly 22% (about $34 per month) and lowering gasoline use by about 22 liters per month, or 50 to 60 kg of CO2. These household-level gains are real rather than displaced: adopters replace a gasoline car rather than add a second vehicle, and we find no rebound in driving or other carbon-intensive spending. Their aggregate reach, however, is bounded by who adopts. Take-up is highly selective, concentrated among affluent and already-green households rather than the heaviest drivers, so the program largely finances a switch among households already inclined to make it. Random lottery wins reveal latent demand beyond this group: a cash windfall raises EV purchases via green loans by 20 percentage points, even among consumers with no prior environmental leanings, indicating that liquidity constraints, not preferences, keep many others out. Preferential green credit can thus deliver complementary climate and financial benefits, but its impact on aggregate emissions depends on extending access beyond the already-green and well-capitalized.
• ”On the Origins of Financial Distress” together with Eline Molin, Erik Plug, Paula Roth, and Kasper Roszbach Abstract
  Financial distress has severe consequences for individuals and families, yet its intergenerational transmission remains poorly understood. Using rich administrative data from Sweden, we examine why children whose parents experience financial distress are more likely to face similar challenges themselves. Using an adoption design that separates pre-birth from post-birth influences, we find that both matter. The post-birth family environment is, however, more than three times as strongly associated with children’s financial distress as pre-birth factors. Our path-way analysis further shows that low liquid assets play a key role in this post-birth transmission. Our findings underscore the importance of family environments on financial hardship and highlight the potential of targeted policies to break the cycle of intergenerational financial distress.

”Quid Pro Quo: Life Insurance Choices of Spouses” Coauthors: Wenli Li and Jenny Säve-Söderbergh Abstract

Selected Works:

1. ”How Do Acquisitions Affect the Mental Health of Employees?”,  Coauthors: Laurent Bach Ramin Baghai, and Rui Silva. Accepted at Management Science, 2024 Abstract
   . We study employee mental health as a non-monetary measure of the long-term effects of mergers. Using employer-employee level data linked to individual health records, we document that the incidence of stress, anxiety, depression, and psychiatric medication usage increased following mergers. These effects are prevalent among employees from both targets and acquirers, in weak as well as in growing, profitable firms. Employees who experience negative career developments within the merging firms, `blue-collar’ workers and employees with lower skills are most affected. Mergers that generate more mental illness among employees perform worse post-transaction. A variety of tests address endogeneity concerns
3. ”Impulsive Consumption and Financial Wellbeing: Evidence from an Increase in the Availability of Alcohol”, The Review of Financial Studies, 2021, Volume 34, Issue 5, May 2021, Pages 2608–2647, Coauthor: Itzhak Ben-David,   Abstract
   Increased availability of alcohol might harm individuals if they have time-inconsistent preferences and consume more than planned before. We study this idea by examining the credit behavior of low-income households around the expansion of the opening hours of retail liquor stores during a nationwide experiment in Sweden. Consistent with store closures serving as commitment devices, expanded operating hours led to higher alcohol consumption and greater consumer credit demand, default, and negative consequences in the labor market. Our calculation shows that the effects of alcohol consumption on indebtedness could amount to 3.2 times the expenditure on alcohol.
5. ”Scarcity and Consumers’ Credit Choice”, Theory and Decisions, 2021, Volume 91, Issue 5, May 2021, Pages, Coauthors: Chloe Le Coq and Peter van Santen,    Abstract
   This paper documents that high-educated borrowers choose a lower loan to value ratio when their budget constraints are exogenously tighter. In contrast, low-educated borrowers do not respond to temporarily elevated levels of scarcity. This lack of response translates into a significantly higher probability of default and an 11.6 percent increase in borrowing costs. We show that a difference in access to liquidity and/or buffer stocks cannot explain our results. Instead, a framework where the awareness of self-control problems is positively correlated with education explains why high-educated, but not low-educated, consumers choose a lower LTV as a commitment device. Our findings highlight that increased levels of scarcity risk reinforce the conditions of poverty.
7. “Bad Times, Good Credit”, Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, 2020, 52: 107-142. Coauthors: Bo Becker and Kasper Roszbach  Abstract
   Banks’ limited knowledge about borrowers’ creditworthiness constitutes an important friction in credit markets. Is this friction deeper in recessions, thereby contributing to cyclical swings in credit, or is the depth of the friction reduced, as bad times reveal information about firm quality? We test these alternative hypotheses using internal rating data from a large Swedish cross-border bank and credit scores from a credit bureau. The ability to classify corporate borrowers by credit quality is greater during bad times and worse during good times Soft and hard information measures both display countercyclical patterns. Our results suggest that information frictions in corporate credit markets are intrinsically counter-cyclical and not due to cyclical variation in monitoring effort.
9. ”Financial Distress and Suicide over the Lifecycle for Individuals with ADHD: A Population Study”, Science Advances, 2020, 6, no. 40: eaba1551. Coauthors: Theodore P. Beauchaine and Itzhak Ben-David.   Abstract
   Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) exerts lifelong impairment, including difficulty sustaining employment, poor credit, and suicide risk. To date, however, studies have assessed selected samples, often via self-report. Using mental health data from the entire Swedish population (N = 11.55 million) and a random sample of credit data (N = 189,267), we provide the first study of objective financial outcomes among adults with ADHD, including associations with suicide. Controlling for psychiatric comorbidities, substance use, education, and income, those with ADHD start adulthood with normal credit demand and default rates. However, in middle age, their default rates grow exponentially, yielding poor credit scores and diminished credit access despite high demand. Sympathomimetic prescriptions are unassociated with improved financial behaviors. Last, financial distress is associated with a fourfold higher risk of suicide among those with ADHD. For men but not women with ADHD who suicide, outstanding debt increases in the 3 years prior. No such pattern exists for others who suicide.
11. ”The Labor Market Effects of Credit Market Information”, The Review of Financial Studies, June 2018, 31(6), 2005-2037, Editor’s Choice, Michael J. Brennan Best Paper Award 2019, Coauthors: Emily Breza and Andres Liberman.  Abstract
    We exploit a natural experiment to provide one of the first measurements of the causal effect of negative credit information on employment and earnings. We estimate that one additional year of negative credit information reduces employment by 3 percentage points and wage earnings by $1,000. In comparison, the decrease in credit is only one-fourth as large. Negative credit information also causes an increase in self-employment and a decrease in mobility. Further evidence suggests this cost of default is inefficiently borne by those most creditworthy among previous defaulters.

News:

October, 2026: I will present our paper ”Employee Debt Overhang and Firm Performance” at the Finance Organizations, Markets (FOM) 2026 Conference at Yale on October 15-16. The preliminary program is now available here.

October, 2026: I will discuss at the CEPR Household Finance conference at Gergenzee: Property Rights and Financial Access” by Purnoor Tak

August, 2026: I will discuss at the EFA in Ghent: The Geography of Savings Opportunities in Retirement Plans 20 Aug: 4:00pm-5:30pm · Location: LR M0.1 (Floor 0) and Rethinking the Stock Market Participation Puzzle: A Qualitative Approach, 22 Aug: 9:30am-11:00am · Location: LR M0.1 (Floor 0)

June, 2026: I will present our paper: ”Employee Debt Overhang and Firm Performance” at the CSEF-CEPR Conference on Labor and Finance, Capri, Italy

May, 2026: I was voted into the Steering Committee of the CEPR Research and Policy Network (RPN) on Household Finance.

May, 2026: I will present our paper: ”Employee Debt Overhang and Firm Performance” at the Labor and Finance Group Spring Conference at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management in Nashville, TN, USA

November, 2025: I received 3,7 MSEK research grant from the National Science Foundation (Vetenskåpsradet) for our project ”Economic Rehabilitation and Crime: The Crime-Preventive Potential of Debt Relief”, with Elin Molin (Lund), Johanna Rickne (SU), and Paula Roth (SSE)

Check out: 

Kathrine Schlafman and I continue to organize the CEPR seminar series on Household Finance. Please register and join us online once a month

One more year was added to the Swedish House of Finance Women in Finance Database. We have now a 5-year panel that tracks the share of women in the top 100 finance departments of the world  (plus the top 50 in the EU). 

The trailer and the movie ’Sidelined in Science’! A short movie about the Science behind roadblocks to women’s academic careers in (financial) economics. We also made a short video where the authors formulate policy recommendations.

The trailer: 

The short movie (20 minutes) and the policy recommendations (17 minutes):

Highlight: ”The Labor Market Effects of Credit Market Information” together with Emily Breza and Andres Liberman in the Review of Financial Studies, received the Michael J.Brennan Best Paper Award at the SFS Cavalcade.

Work in Progress:

”Debt Relief and Children’s Outcomes: Measuring the Effect of Personal Debt Relief Programs” Coauthors Eline Molin, Erik Plug, Paula Roth, and Kasper Roszbach

”How Ideas Spread: Evidence from Quasi-Random Conference Slots”, Coauthors Renee Adams , Laurent Bach and Jing Xu

”Tuition, Debt, and Professional Incentives” Coauthors Andrew Hertzberg and Emiel Jerphanion

”Loneliness, Alzheimer and Financial Distress” Coauthors Andrew Herzberg and Johan Orrenius