Under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), banks can fulfill their obligation to meet local credit needs either by lending in low-to-moderate-income (LMI) communities or by purchasing loans made by others. This paper evaluates whether CRA credit for purchases has had its intended effect of...

Some researchers have used increasing small business lending distances to argue that technological changes have reduced banks' reliance on soft information. These studies generally assume distance changes are uniform across loans and lenders. Our paper examines heterogeneity in distance changes....

Under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) banks can fulfill their affirmative obligation to meet local credit needs by lending in low-to-moderate-income (LMI) communities or by purchasing loans made by others. This paper evaluates whether giving CRA credit for purchases has had its intended...

Many homeowners miss significant savings by not refinancing when interest rates are low. Among those who may find refinancing difficult are borrowers with balances below $150,000. Low-balance mortgagors pay proportionally more closing costs, are offered higher interest rates, and may find fewer...

While a substantial literature has examined the causes of mortgage foreclosure, there has been relatively little work on the consequences of foreclosure for the borrowers themselves. Using a large sample of anonymous credit bureau records, observed quarterly from 1999Q1 through 2010Q1, we...

The annualized interest rate for a payday loan often exceeds 10 times that of a typical credit card, yet this market grew immensely in the 1990s and 2000s, elevating concerns about the risk payday loans pose to consumers and whether payday lenders target minority neighborhoods. This paper...

From 1999 to 2013, U.S. mortgage debt doubled and then contracted sharply. Our understanding of the factors driving this volatility in the stock of debt is hampered by a lack of data on mortgage flows. Using comprehensive, individual-level panel data on consumer liabilities, I estimate detailed...

One of the major reasons hypothesized for the tepid economic recovery thus far is the ongoing "deleveraging" process. From 2009:Q3 to 2011:Q3, aggregate household debt declined by about $1.5 trillion in real terms, with mortgage debt falling by about $1 trillion. Other than defaults, the factors...

This paper evaluates the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), a law mandating that banks help meet the credit needs of lower income households and neighborhoods. To measure the effect of the law on lending to targeted groups since 1994, I take advantage of discontinuous targeting rules and abrupt...