A significant proportion of credit card users persistently make low repayments on their debt. This paper tests whether a financial tool known as Prize Linked Debt (PLD) can increase credit card debt repayments amongst borrowers who repay the minimum, using an online experiment. PLD entails a...

We use monthly credit card data from the Federal Reserve's Y-14M reports to study the early impact of the COVID-19 shock on the use and availability of consumer credit. First, we find that in counties severely affected by the pandemic, creditworthy borrowers reduce their credit card balances and...

Using a large panel of credit card accounts, we examine the dynamics of credit card borrowing and repayment in the United States and what these imply for the expected costs of credit card debt to consumers. Our analysis reveals that: (1) credit cards are predominantly used to borrow, (2) card...

We study the causal effect of mortgage rate changes on consumer spending, debt repayment, and defaults during an expansionary and a contractionary monetary policy episode in Canada. Our identification takes advantage of the fact that the interest rates of short-term fixed-rate mortgages (the...

In the United States, many consumers are increasingly accumulating debt, much of which is harmful and expensive. Prior research has devoted a great deal of attention to understanding why consumers generally get into debt and the strategies they can use to repay existing debts. While this work...

This paper utilizes a unique new dataset of credit card accounts to analyze how people respond to changes in credit supply. The data consist of a panel of thousands of individual credit card accounts from several different card issuers, with associated credit bureau data. We estimate both...

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused large changes in consumer spending, including how people make their payments. We use data from a nationally representative survey of U.S. consumers collected before COVID in 2018 and 2019 and during COVID in 2020 to analyze changes in consumer payment behavior...