I explain the credit card debt puzzle – the co-holding of high-cost debt and low-yield liquid assets – with a household and individual determinant that lower debt repayments. At the household level, co-holding is consistent with intra-household frictions. Couples co-hold 40 percent more than...

Credit card debt has become intrinsic to the way of life and are accepted as part of modern day living. This paper examines to what extent personal budgeting can influence the effective use of Australian credit card debt. The findings suggest that the most effective credit card debtors are those...

I use data from an online financial service to show that many consumers fail to stick to their self-set debt paydown plans, and argue that this behavior is best explained by present bias. Each user's sensitivity of consumption spending to paycheck receipt proxies for his short-run impatience. I...

In this paper, we present a brief exposition of the history of the secured credit card, beginning with its origins in California in the 1970s. We present a series of stylized facts based on a December 2015 cross section of the secured card market. We find that most secured cards require an...

We use the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to revisit what is termed the credit card debt puzzle: why consumers simultaneously co-hold high-interest credit card debt and low-interest assets that could be used to pay down this debt. This dataset contains unique information on...

Merchant fees and reward programs generate an implicit monetary transfer to credit card users from non-card (or "cash") users because merchants generally do not set differential prices for card users to recoup the costs of fees and rewards. On average, each cash-using household pays $149 to...

College students frequently show they have little skill when it comes to using a credit card in a responsible manner. This article deals with this issue in an emerging market and in a pioneering manner. University students (n=769) in São Paulo, Brazil's main financial center, replied to a...