Marketplace lending relies on screening and information production by investors, a major deviation from the traditional banking paradigm. Theoretically, the participation of sophisticated investors improves screening outcomes but also creates adverse selection among investors. In maximizing loan...

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. But a generalized random forest algorithm finds...

Using two randomized field experiments, we examine how warning borrowers that their loan performance will be reported to a public credit registry affects their loan take-up and repayment decisions. We show that credit warnings increase loan take-up rates. Reducing incumbent lenders'...

We use individual credit histories to study how creditor-friendly repossession rights in auto lending affect borrowers. Results from a quasi-experimental setting show that bankruptcy rates among subprime auto borrowers increase twice as much following natural disasters in states with strong...