How does the large market for credit score improvement products affect consumers and market efficiency? For consumers …, we use a randomized encouragement design on a standard credit builder loan (CBL) and find null average effects on scores … credit activity. CBLs induce delinquency on pre-existing loan obligations, suggesting that even a seemingly modest additional …

Standard economic theory says that unsecured, high-interest, short-term debt — such as borrowing via credit cards and … income shock of unemployment. Instead, individuals smooth their credit card debt and overdrafts by adjusting consumption. We … first use detailed longitudinal information on debit and credit card transactions, account balances, and credit lines from a …

-constrained investors to take excessive risks. Ignored are unconstrained investors speculating on higher prices during credit booms. To … a bank/brokerage-credit-fueled stock-market bubble. The direct effect is a 25 cent increase in a stock's market …

A growing literature shows that credit indicators forecast aggregate real outcomes. While researchers have proposed … simple, frictionless, model explains empirical findings commonly attributed to credit cycles. Our key assumption is that … firms have heterogeneous exposures to underlying economy-wide shocks. This leads to endogenous dispersion in credit quality …

This paper develops a network model of interbank lending, in which banks decide to extend credit to their potential … literature on financial networks, we focus on how anticipation of future defaults may result in ex ante “credit freezes,” whereby … banks refuse to extend credit to one another. We first characterize the terms of the interbank contracts and the patterns of …

We evaluate the impact of the credit conditions facing corporations on their emissions of toxic air pollutants … that positive shocks to credit conditions reduce corporate pollution …

banks in providing credit to smaller borrowers about whom information is least complete and, more generally, support the …