Unsecured borrowing plays an important role for consumers in smoothing consumption. Each year, almost 40% of U.S. households have credit card debts and 4% borrow using a high-cost payday loan. This paper aims to explore the similarities and differences between both types of borrowers. Using the...

How do financial frictions affect household borrowing and default behavior? To what extent does frictional financial intermediation influence the welfare implications of consumer bankruptcy regulations? To quantitatively address these questions, I develop an Aiyagari-type model with consumer...

In this paper we empirically analyse the factors which determined consumer credit in Greece in the period before and after the financial liberalisation, while accounting for significant changes in structure due to the lifting of credit restrictions and the subsequent impressive boom of consumer...

This paper uses dynamic panel data methods to examine the determinants of nonperforming loans (NPLs) in the Greek banking sector, separately for each type of loan (consumer, business and mortgage loans). The study is motivated by the hypothesis that both macroeconomic and bank-specific variables...

This report examines how consumers’ financial profiles vary by levels of emergency savings. We use a new version of the Making Ends Meet survey and pair it with credit bureau data from our Consumer Credit Panel to provide a unique picture of consumers' financial profiles not available through...

We study the relative importance of asset-backed lending (ABL) and cash flow-based lending (CFBL) in auto finance. We find that negative durability shocks generated by vehicle discontinuations lead to increased loan-to-value ratios and down payments. These results are consistent with an ABL+CFBL...

Captive finance subsidiaries, vertically integrated lenders, create a potential channel for trade policy to affect consumer credit. Examining the Trump administration 2018 metal tariffs’ impact on auto manufacturers, we find consumers received worse auto loan terms from captive lenders after...

We use the 2012 South Carolina Department of Revenue data breach as a natural experiment to study how data breaches and news coverage about them affect consumers? interactions with the credit market and their use of credit. We find that some consumers directly exposed to the breach protected...