Financial innovations are a common explanation of the rise in consumer credit and bankruptcies. To evaluate this story, we develop a simple model that incorporates two key frictions: asymmetric information about borrowers' risk of default and a fixed cost to create each contract offered by...

A number of studies have pointed to various mistakes that consumers might make in their consumption-saving and financial decisions. We utilize a unique market experiment conducted by a large U.S. bank to assess how systematic and costly such mistakes are in practice. The bank offered consumers a...

Approximately half of credit card holders in the United States regularly carry unpaid credit card debt. These so-called revolvers exhibit payment behavior that differs from that of those who repay their entire credit card balance every month. Previous literature has focused on the adoption of...

We test the interest rate sensitivity of subprime credit card borrowers using a unique panel data set from a UK credit card company. What is novel about our contribution is that we were given details of a randomized interest rate experiment conducted by the lender between October 2006 and...

We use data from several waves of the Survey of Consumer Finances to document credit and debit card ownership and use across US demographic groups. We then present recent theoretical and empirical contributions to the study of credit and debit card behavior. Utilization rates of credit lines and...

Smoother labor incomes alleviate credit constraints by reducing workers' desire to borrow, and prospects of upward income mobility have smaller beneficial effects for currently poor workers when borrowing constraints are binding. These simple theoretical insights are consistent with the...

The price elasticity of demand for credit has major implications for macroeconomics, finance, and development. We present estimates of this parameter derived from a randomized trial. The experiment was implemented by a consumer microfinance lender in South Africa and identifies demand curves...

Studie zu Dispozinsen / Ratenkrediten Aktenzeichen: 514-06.01-2810HS034 Laufzeit 8/2011 – 5/2012 - Zusammenfassung – In Deutschland verfügen etwa 80 Prozent der Haushalte über einen Dispositionskredit. Bei beträchtlicher Variation liegt der eingeräumte Kreditrahmen bei knapp dem 3-fachen...

This paper investigates whether self-employed households use consumer loans - in particular instalment loans and overdrafts - to finance business activities. Controlling for financial and non-financial household variables we show that self-employed households particularly use personal overdrafts...

We examine recent regulation requiring US municipal governments to disclose private debt. We show that governments fail to disclose 55-80% of reportable debt events and that, conditional on disclosure, filings often omit contract details essential for bond pricing. Non-compliant issuers are also...