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 …

We ask two questions related to how access to credit affects the nature of business cycles. First, does the standard … theory of unsecured credit account for the high volatility and procyclicality of credit and the high volatility and … that more households than normal fare very poorly). Second, does access to credit smooth aggregate consumption or aggregate …

relative terms, and an overall improvement in household credit standing. New financing of durable consumption by borrowers with …This paper investigates the impact of lower mortgage rates on household balance sheets and other economic outcomes … during the housing crisis. We use proprietary loan-level panel data matched to consumer credit records using borrowers …

We propose a new approach to studying the pass-through of credit expansion policies that focuses on frictions, such as … estimating heterogeneous MPBs and MPLs in the U.S. credit card market. Using panel data on 8.5 million credit cards and 743 … credit limit regression discontinuities, we find that the MPB is declining in credit score, falling from 59% for consumers …

One suggested hypothesis for the dramatic rise in household borrowing that preceded the financial crisis is that low …-income households increased their demand for credit to finance higher consumption expenditures in order to "keep up" with higher …-income households. Using household level data on debt accumulation during 2001-2012, we show that low-income households in high …

We measure the response of household spending to the economic stimulus payments (ESPs) disbursed in mid-2008, using …

This paper uses a detailed panel of individual spending, income, account balances, and credit limits from a personal … related or not, even with the best data. We thus look at household finances and find that individuals delever upon retirement …

changes, has the potential to meaningfully shift durables purchases intertemporally and how it is affected by consumer credit … sensitive to supply of credit. Consumers with high credit risk scores are most able to pull purchases forward. At the same time … these credit frictions. We discuss policy implications and the likely magnitudes of tax changes necessary for any …

Expenditure visibility—the extent to which a household's spending on a consumption category is noticeable to others …