Fintechs are believed to help expand credit access to underserved consumers without taking on additional risk. We compare the performance efficiency of LendingClub's unsecured personal loans with similar loans originated by banks. Using stochastic frontier estimation, we decompose the observed...

We compare the performance of unsecured personal installment loans made by traditional bank lenders with that of LendingClub, using a stochastic frontier estimation technique to decompose the observed nonperforming loans into three components. The first is the best-practice minimum ratio that a...

Using 2013 and 2016 data, we compare the performance of unsecured consumer loans made by U.S. bank holding companies to that of the fintech lender, LendingClub. We focus on the volume of nonperforming unsecured consumer loans and apply a novel technique developed by Hughes and Moon (2017) that...

Practically all industrialized economies restrict the length of time that credit bureaus can retain borrowers’ negative credit information. There is, however, a large variation in the permitted retention times across countries. By exploiting a quasi-experimental variation in this retention...

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 countercyclicality of bankruptcy filings found in U.S. data?...

On April 8-9, 2010, the Payment Cards Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia hosted a conference that brought together leaders in the prepaid card industry, regulators, consumer groups, law enforcement agents, and industry researchers to discuss the economics of prepaid cards and the...

Each year, millions of financially distressed consumers in the U.S. face a difficult choice among the debt relief options available to them. This paper describes the options available to borrowers who seek assistance in managing their debts and discusses the information and incentive problems...

What are the positive and normative implications of eliminating bankruptcy protection for indebted individuals? Without bankruptcy protection, creditors can collect on defaulted debt to the extent permitted by wage garnishment laws. The elimination lowers the default premium on unsecured debt...