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Spillovers from Costly Credit

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  • Brian T Melzer

Abstract

Low-income households with proximate access to payday loans exhibit greater economic distress, higher take-up of food assistance benefits, and greater delinquency on child support payments than peers without proximate loan access. These findings suggest that borrowing can exacerbate distress, leading borrowers to use transfer programs and to prioritize payday loan payments over other liabilities like child support. In that way, payday lending produces negative externalities—costs imposed on taxpayers that fund transfer programs and nonresident family members that fail to receive child support. Received August 13, 2014; editorial decision December 5, 2016 by Editor Alexander Ljungqvist. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

Suggested Citation

  • Brian T Melzer, 2018. "Spillovers from Costly Credit," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 31(9), pages 3568-3594.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:rfinst:v:31:y:2018:i:9:p:3568-3594.
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    Cited by:

    1. Julia Fonseca, 2023. "Less Mainstream Credit, More Payday Borrowing? Evidence from Debt Collection Restrictions," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 78(1), pages 63-103, February.
    2. Dasgupta, Kabir & Mason, Brenden J., 2020. "The effect of interest rate caps on bankruptcy: Synthetic control evidence from recent payday lending bans," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    3. Daniel Bjorkegren & Joshua Blumenstock & Omowunmi Folajimi-Senjobi & Jacqueline Mauro & Suraj R. Nair, 2022. "Instant Loans Can Lift Subjective Well-Being: A Randomized Evaluation of Digital Credit in Nigeria," Papers 2202.13540, arXiv.org.
    4. Francisco Gomes & Michael Haliassos & Tarun Ramadorai, 2021. "Household Finance," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 59(3), pages 919-1000, September.
    5. Megan Doherty Bea, 2023. "Relational foundations of an unequal consumer credit market: Symbiotic ties between banks and payday lenders," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(1), pages 320-345, January.
    6. Christine L. Dobridge, 2016. "For Better and for Worse? Effects of Access to High-Cost Consumer Credit," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2016-056, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    7. Victor Medina-Olivares & Raffaella Calabrese, 2023. "Detecting Consumers' Financial Vulnerability using Open Banking Data: Evidence from UK Payday Loans," Papers 2306.01749, arXiv.org.
    8. Katharina Allinger & Elisabeth Beckmann, 2021. "Prevalence and determinants of nonbank borrowing in CESEE: evidence from the OeNB Euro Survey," Focus on European Economic Integration, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank), issue Q1/21, pages 7-35.
    9. Megan Doherty Bea & K. Bley, 2022. "(Un)conditional consumer protections in high‐cost lending regulation: Impacts on local lending geographies," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(4), pages 1561-1596, December.

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