We study credit card rewards as an ideal laboratory to quantify redistribution between consumers in retail financial markets. Comparing cards with and without rewards, we find that, regardless of income, sophisticated individuals profit from reward credit cards at the expense of naive consumers....

Following the 2001 financial crisis, the government of Argentina instituted economic policies to soften the adverse impact of the crisis on the economy. In this paper, we use loan-level data to empirically assess the impact of the currency devaluation and the economic response policies on...

Bank lending is an important source of funding for firms. Most loans are in the form of credit lines. Empirical studies of line demand have been complicated by their use of data on publicly traded firms, which have a wide menu of financing options. We avoid this problem by using a unique...

The authors find that firms that face higher upfront commitment fees, risk premium spreads, or usage fees have smaller credit lines, while those with higher overdraft fees have larger ones. Firms with greater profit growth in the past have larger credit lines, while those with more internal...

This paper investigates Japanese banks' earnings management behavior under three distinct economic environments: (1) high-growth with asset price bubble economy (1985-1990); (2) stagnant growth with financial distress economy (1991-1996); and (3) severe recession with credit crunch economy...

This paper investigates Japanese banks' earnings management behavior under three distinct economic environments: (1) high-growth with asset price bubble economy (1985-1990); (2) stagnant growth with financial distress economy (1991-1996); and (3) severe recession with credit crunch economy...

Financially constrained borrowers have the incentive to influence the appraisal process in order to increase borrowing or reduce the interest rate. We document that the average valuation bias for residential refinance transactions is above 5%. The bias is larger for highly leveraged...

The main rationale for policy intervention in debt renegotiation is to enhance such activity when foreclosures are perceived to be inefficiently high. We examine the ability of the government to influence debt renegotiation by empirically evaluating the effects of the 2009 Home Affordable...

Using several large data sets of mortgage loans originated between 2004 and 2007, we find that in the prime mortgage market, banks generally sold low-default-risk loans into the secondary market while retaining higher-default-risk loans in their portfolios. In contrast, these lenders retained...

To understand better the role of loan officers' incentives in the origins of the financial crisis, we study a controlled field experiment conducted by a large bank. In the experiment, the incentive structure of a subset of small business loan officers was altered from fixed salary to...