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 this question using Swedish administrative data and quasi-random variation in wage garnishment timing. Garnishment, a widespread enforcement mechanism in many Western economies, reduces a worker’s marginal return to effort and requires employers to monitor and administer the worker’s financial distress. We find, first, that garnished workers bunch earnings just below the minimum income threshold above which wages are garnished by adjusting hours, attendance, employment, and career progression. Relative to the pre-distress period, monthly earnings fall by 18%, unemployment rises by 1.5 percentage points, and promotion and job-switching rates decline by roughly 30% and 15%, respectively. Spouses do not offset the income loss by working more. Second, while garnished workers show no deterioration in health and reduce antidepressant use, their coworkers increase antidepressant consumption, consistent with rising stress and workload when a teammate’s reliability declines. Third, firms exposed to a newly garnished worker experience a reduction in value added, net sales, and profitability by about 4–5%. The risk that the firm is shut down doubles, with effects concentrated in small, labor-intensive firms. The results reveal a new transmission channel: household financial distress, through its effect on worker and team productivity, can damage firm performance.
• ”Financing the Transition: Evidence on Green Loans and Household Behavior” together with Navid Akbaripour, Ehsan Mahdikhani, and Arna Olafsson Abstract
  Using transaction–level bank data, we exploit the introduction of a subsidized green car loan program and random lottery windfalls as natural experiments to identify the impacts of electric vehicle (EV) adoption via green loans on household spending behavior and finances. We show that households financing EV purchases with green loans reduce gasoline expenditures by roughly 30% on average, increase electricity bills by ∼ 26%, and achieve net monthly savings of ∼ $34 in vehicle energy costs. We also find that the subsidized green car loan program significantly increased EV purchases among households previously owning gasoline vehicles, effectively accelerating the replacement of internal-combustion-engine cars with EVs. Random lottery wins provide further evidence that relaxing liquidity constraints drives green adoption: winning a cash prize raises EV purchases via green loans by 20 percentage points, even among consumers without prior environmental leanings or financial advantages. Our findings highlight that preferential green credit can deliver both climate and financial benefits while underscoring the role of liquidity constraints in sustainable adoption.
• ”Inherited Hardship or Learned Behavior? Nature vs. Nurture in 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. Leveraging an adoption design that separates genetic from environmental influences, we find that both nature and nurture matter. The environment in which a child has been raised is, however, more than three times as important as inherited traits in explaining financial distress. Observable characteristics, particularly low liquid assets, account for around half of the observed transmission. Our findings underscore the causal impact of family environments on financial hardship and highlight the potential of targeted policies, such as debt relief and financial education, 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:

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)

June, 2025:  I received a 3.27 million SEK research grant from FORTE, for our project: Debt Forgiveness as Suicide Prevention, together with Helle Mögesön Alvesson (KI) and Paula Roth (SSE).

May, 2025:  I was appointed as an expert in the newly established Swedish Government inquiry: ”Measures against Over-Indebtedness with Particular Focus on Perpetual Debtors” (Fi 2025:05).

March, 2025:  I was appointed Professor in the Chair of Household Finance at the VU School of Business and Economics, Department of Finance

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 3-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. 

The trailer: 

The short movie (20 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.

Upcoming Talks and Discussions:

April 28, 2026: Seminar St Gallen Seminar Finance Department, Swiss

May 3-4, 2026: Labor and Finance Group Conference, Nashville, Tennessee USA, present our paper ”Employee Debt Overhang and Firm Performance.” See full program here

June 1-2, 2026: Nordic Household Finance Summit, Copenhagen, DK, ”Employee Debt Overhang and Firm Performance.” See full program here

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