The reordering of transactions from "high-to-low" is a controversial bank practice thought to maximize fees paid by low-income customers on overdrawn accounts. We exploit multiple class-action lawsuits resulting in mandatory changes to this practice, coupled with payday lending data, to show...

Firms offering "buy now, pay later" (BNPL) point-of-sale installment loans with minimal underwriting and low interest have captured a growing fraction of the market for short-term unsecured consumer credit. We provide a detailed look into the US BNPL market by constructing a large panel of BNPL...

Firms offering "buy now, pay later" (BNPL) point-of-sale installment loans with minimal underwriting and low interest have captured a growing fraction of the market for short-term unsecured consumer credit. We provide a detailed look into the US BNPL market by constructing a large panel of BNPL...

The reordering of transactions from "high-to-low" is a controversial bank practice thought to maximize fees paid by low-income customers on overdrawn accounts. We exploit multiple class-action lawsuits resulting in mandatory changes to this practice, coupled with payday lending data, to show...

The peer-to-peer loan market was designed to bring together borrowers and lenders without banks as middlemen. Yet over time P2P lending platforms have evolved into new intermediaries, performing essentially all tasks related to loan evaluation. By contrast, lenders are overwhelmingly passive and...

Related-party transactions, where one of the parties is owned or controlled by the other, are often regarded as a way to tunnel funds out of firms. This paper provides the first empirical evidence on a specific channel through which related-party lending may benefit borrowers, namely its ability...

We study the delivery of subsidized financing to small firms through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). Smaller firms are less likely to gain early PPP access, an effect attenuated in small banks and firms with prior lending relationships. Their more even treatment offers a new rationale,...