IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedpwp/05-16.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Switching costs and adverse selection in the market for credit cards: new evidence

Author

Listed:

Abstract

To explain persistence of credit card interest rates at relatively high levels, Calem and Mester (AER, 1995) argued that informational barriers create switching costs for high-balance customers. As evidence, using data from the 1989 Survey of Consumer Finances, they showed that these households were more likely to be rejected when applying for new credit. In this paper, they revisit the question using the 1998 and 2001 SCF. Further, they use new information on card interest rates to test for pricing effects consistent with information-based switching costs. The authors find that informational barriers to competition persist, although their role may have declined. ; Also issued as Payment Cards Center Discussion Paper No. 05-09

Suggested Citation

  • Paul S. Calem & Michael B. Gordy & Loretta J. Mester, 2005. "Switching costs and adverse selection in the market for credit cards: new evidence," Working Papers 05-16, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedpwp:05-16
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/frbp/assets/working-papers/2005/wp05-16.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Calem, Paul S & Mester, Loretta J, 1995. "Consumer Behavior and the Stickiness of Credit-Card Interest Rates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1327-1336, December.
    2. Victor Stango, 2002. "Pricing with Consumer Switching Costs: Evidence from the Credit Card Market," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(4), pages 475-492, December.
    3. Kerr, Sougata & Dunn, Lucia, 2008. "Consumer Search Behavior in the Changing Credit Card Market," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 26, pages 345-353.
    4. Berlin, Mitchell & Mester, Loretta J., 2004. "Credit card rates and consumer search," Review of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1-2), pages 179-198.
    5. Mester, Loretta J, 1994. "Why Are Credit Card Rates Sticky?," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 4(4), pages 505-530, May.
    6. Ausubel, Lawrence M, 1991. "The Failure of Competition in the Credit Card Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(1), pages 50-81, March.
    7. Stango, Victor, 2002. "Pricing with Consumer Switching Costs: Evidence from the Credit Card Market," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(4), pages 475-492, December.
    8. David B. Gross, 2002. "An Empirical Analysis of Personal Bankruptcy and Delinquency," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 15(1), pages 319-347, March.
    9. Mark Furletti, 2003. "Credit card pricing developments and their disclosure," Consumer Finance Institute discussion papers 03-02, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    10. Victor Stango, 2000. "Competition And Pricing In The Credit Card Market," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 82(3), pages 499-508, August.
    11. Robert B. Avery & Paul S. Calem & Glenn B. Canner, 2003. "An overview of consumer data and credit reporting," Federal Reserve Bulletin, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), vol. 89(Feb), pages 47-73, February.
    12. Sandra E. Black & Donald P. Morgan, 1999. "Meet the new borrowers," Current Issues in Economics and Finance, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 5(Feb).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Massoud, Nadia & Saunders, Anthony & Scholnick, Barry, 2011. "The cost of being late? The case of credit card penalty fees," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 49-59, June.
    2. Scholnick, Barry & Massoud, Nadia & Saunders, Anthony & Carbo-Valverde, Santiago & Rodríguez-Fernández, Francisco, 2008. "The economics of credit cards, debit cards and ATMs: A survey and some new evidence," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(8), pages 1468-1483, August.
    3. Omar A. Abdelrahman, 2016. "Credit Card Rates and Consumer Switch: New Evidence," International Journal of Economics and Finance, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 8(12), pages 95-105, December.
    4. Abbas Valadkhani & Sajid Anwar & Amir Arjonandi, 2012. "How to capture the full extent of price stickiness in credit card interest rates?," Economics Working Papers wp12-02, School of Economics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia.
    5. Akin, Guzin Gulsun & Aysan, Ahmet Faruk & Kara, Gazi Ishak & Yildiran, Levent, 2008. "Non-price competition in credit card markets through bundling and bank level benefits," MPRA Paper 17768, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Marc Rysman, 2007. "An Empirical Analysis Of Payment Card Usage," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(1), pages 1-36, March.
    7. Mitchell Berlin & Loretta J. Mester, 2004. "Credit card rates and consumer search," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 13(1-2), pages 179-198.
    8. Yiwei Dou & Geng Li & Joshua Ronen, 2019. "Does Price Regulation Affect Competition? Evidence from Credit Card Solicitations," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2019-018, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    9. Cash, Alyxandra & Tsai, Hui-Ju, 2018. "Readability of the credit card agreements and financial charges," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 145-150.
    10. Kevin Amess & Leigh Drake & Helen Knight, 2010. "An Empirical Analysis of UK Credit Card Pricing," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 37(2), pages 101-117, September.
    11. Ayadi, O. Felix, 1997. "Adverse selection, search costs and sticky credit card rates," Financial Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 6(1), pages 53-67.
    12. Sougata Kerr & Lucia Dunn & Stephen Cosslett, 2004. "Do Banks Use Private Information from Consumer Accounts? Evidence of Relationship Lending in Credit Card Interest Rate Heterogeneity," Working Papers 04-08, Ohio State University, Department of Economics.
    13. Akin, Guzin Gulsun & Aysan, Ahmet Faruk & Borici, Denada & Yildiran, Levent, 2013. "Regulate one service, tame the entire market: Credit cards in Turkey," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 1195-1204.
    14. Stango, Victor, 2003. "Strategic Responses to Regulatory Threat in the Credit Card Market," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 46(2), pages 427-452, October.
    15. Tufan Ekici & Lucia Dunn, 2010. "Credit card debt and consumption: evidence from household-level data," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(4), pages 455-462.
    16. Kartik Athreya & Xuan S. Tam & Eric R. Young, 2012. "A Quantitative Theory of Information and Unsecured Credit," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(3), pages 153-183, July.
    17. Scholnick, Barry & Massoud, Nadia & Saunders, Anthony, 2013. "The impact of wealth on financial mistakes: Evidence from credit card non-payment," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 26-37.
    18. G. Gülsün Akın & Ahmet Faruk Aysan & Gazi Ishak Kara & Levent Yildiran, 2009. "Non-Price Competition in Credit Card Markets: Evidence from an Emerging Economy," 2009 Meeting Papers 2, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    19. Zhao, Tianshu & Matthews, Kent & Murinde, Victor, 2013. "Cross-selling, switching costs and imperfect competition in British banks," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(12), pages 5452-5462.
    20. Allen N. Berger & Astrid A. Dick, 2007. "Entry into Banking Markets and the Early‐Mover Advantage," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(4), pages 775-807, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Credit cards;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedpwp:05-16. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Beth Paul (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbphus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.