The intersection of research and policy on consumer credit often has a Goldilocks feel. Some researchers and policymakers posit that consumer credit markets produce too much credit. Other researchers and policymakers posit that markets produce too little credit. I review theories and evidence on...

To date the debate over payday lending has focused on whether access to such lending is on net beneficial or harmful to consumer welfare. However, payday loans are not one product but many, and different forms of lending may have different welfare implications. The current diversity in payday...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) released its initial analysis of bank overdraft programs in a June 2013 white paper. We review the report and provide commentary on its methodology, its preliminary conclusions, and gaps in its analysis. We provide a synopsis of findings from...

'Stacked Deck' is a statistical analysis of outcomes in forced arbitration, also called mandatory arbitration or binding mandatory arbitration, that finds: 1) Individual arbitrators have a strong incentive to favor the firms that provide them with repeat business over an individual consumer they...

The current debate on financial inclusion pays little attention to whether financial inclusion is pro-cyclical with the fluctuating business cycle. This article investigates the relationship between financial inclusion and the business cycle. The findings reveal that the level of savings and the...

This paper analyzes lenders' pricing strategies in the business-to-customer (B2C) unsecured loan market by using a proprietary dataset of approximately 3 million unsecured consumer loans from a B2C online retailer in China. We find that lenders' decisions to invite customers are based on...

The main aim of the paper is to analyse the way of formulating floating-rate clauses as one of the determinants of attractiveness of floating-rate term deposits and the assessment of the compliance of these clauses with law and ethics.In the initial part of of the paper floating-rate term...