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Subprime Consumer Credit Demand: Evidence from a Lender?sPricing Experiment

Author

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  • Sule Alan
  • Ruxandra Dumitrescu
  • Gyongyi Loranth

Abstract

We test the interest rate sensitivity of subprime credit card borrowers using a unique panel data set from a UK credit card company. What is novel about our contribution is that we were given details of a randomized interest rate experiment conducted by the lender between October 2006 and January 2007. We find that individuals who tend to utilize their credit limits fully do not reduce their demand for credit when subject to increases in interest rates as high as 3 percentage points. This finding is naturally interpreted as evidence of binding liquidity constraints. We also demonstrate the importance of truly exogenous variation in interest rates when estimating credit demand elasticities. We show that estimating a standard credit demand equation with nonexperimental variation leads to seriously biased estimates even when conditioning on a rich set of controls and individual fixed effects. In particular, this procedure results in a large and statistically significant 3-month elasticity of credit card debt with respect to interest rates even though the experimental estimate of the same elasticity is neither economically nor statistically different from zero.

Suggested Citation

  • Sule Alan & Ruxandra Dumitrescu & Gyongyi Loranth, 2011. "Subprime Consumer Credit Demand: Evidence from a Lender?sPricing Experiment," BCL working papers 60, Central Bank of Luxembourg.
    • Handle: RePEc:bcl:bclwop:bclwp060
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    Cited by:

    1. Cláudio Ribeiro de Lucinda & Rodrigo Luiz Vieira, 2011. "An Experimental Analysis of the Brazilian Personal Credit Market," Working Papers 10-2011, Universidade de São Paulo, Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade de Ribeirão Preto.
    2. Lukas, M., 2019. "Relative prices and product substitution: Evidence from shocks to consumer credit interest rates," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 21(C), pages 39-49.
    3. Lukas, Moritz, 2017. "Estimating interest rate elasticities in consumer credit," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 155-158.
    4. W. Scott Frame & Larry D. Wall & Lawrence J. White, 2018. "Technological Change and Financial Innovation in Banking: Some Implications for Fintech," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2018-11, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    5. Edika G. Quispe-Torreblanca & Neil Stewart & John Gathergood & George Loewenstein, 2019. "The Red, the Black, and the Plastic: Paying Down Credit Card Debt for Hotels, Not Sofas," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(11), pages 5392-5410, November.
    6. Cho, Sung-Jin & Rust, John, 2012. "Does Zero Interest Work as An Important Marketing Tool?," Research Center for Price Dynamics Working Paper Series 5, Research Center for Price Dynamics, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    7. Helen Higgs & Andrew C. Worthington, 2011. "Price and income elasticity of Australian retail finance: An autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach," Discussion Papers in Finance finance:201117, Griffith University, Department of Accounting, Finance and Economics.
    8. Lukas, Moritz & Nöth, Markus, 2022. "Voluntary minimum repayments and borrower heterogeneity: Evidence from revolving consumer credit," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    9. Sumit Agarwal & Xudong An & Lawrence R. Cordell & Raluca Roman, 2020. "Bank Stress Test Results and Their Impact on Consumer Credit Markets," Working Papers 20-30, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    10. de Lucinda, Claudio Ribeiro & Vieira, Rodrigo Luiz, 2014. "Interest Rates and Informational Issues in the Credit Market: Experimental Evidence from Brazil," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 47-58.
    11. Dawsey, Amanda E., 2015. "State bankruptcy laws and the responsiveness of credit card demand," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 54-76.
    12. Jackson P. Lautier & Vladimir Pozdnyakov & Jun Yan, 2022. "On the Convergence of Credit Risk in Current Consumer Automobile Loans," Papers 2211.09176, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2024.
    13. Sung-Jin Cho & John Rust, 2015. "Precommitments for Financial Self-Control:Evidence from Credit Card Borrowing," 2015 Meeting Papers 33, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    14. Lei Lu & Jianxing Wei & Weixing Wu & Yi Zhou, 2023. "Pricing strategies in BigTech lending: Evidence from China," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 52(2), pages 333-374, June.
    15. Akgündüz, Yusuf Emre & Dursun-de Neef, H. Özlem & Hacihasanoğlu, Yavuz Selim & Yılmaz, Fatih, 2023. "Cost of credit, mortgage demand and house prices," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    16. Bruno Ferman, 2016. "Reading the Fine Print: Information Disclosure in the Brazilian Credit Card Market," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(12), pages 3534-3548, December.
    17. Lukas, Moritz & Nöth, Markus, 2016. "Commitment and Borrower Heterogeneity: Evidence from Revolving Consumer Credit," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145870, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    subprime credit; randomized trials; liquidity constraints;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D11 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Theory
    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance

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