IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aerins/v1y2019i1p27-42.html

Debt Traps? Market Vendors and Moneylender Debt in India and the Philippines

Author

Listed:
  • Dean Karlan
  • Sendhil Mullainathan
  • Benjamin N. Roth

Abstract

A debt trap occurs when someone takes on a high-interest-rate loan and is barely able to pay back the interest, and thus perpetually finds themselves in debt (often by refinancing). Studying such practices is important for understanding financial decision-making of households in dire circumstances, and also for setting appropriate consumer protection policies. We conduct a simple experiment in three sites in which we paid off high-interest moneylender debt of individuals. Most borrowers returned to debt within six weeks. One to two years after intervention, treatment individuals were borrowing at the same rate as control households.

Suggested Citation

  • Dean Karlan & Sendhil Mullainathan & Benjamin N. Roth, 2019. "Debt Traps? Market Vendors and Moneylender Debt in India and the Philippines," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 1(1), pages 27-42, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aerins:v:1:y:2019:i:1:p:27-42
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/aeri.20180030
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aeri.20180030
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aeri.20180030.data
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aeri.20180030.appx
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aeri.20180030.ds
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nikolov, Plamen, 2023. "Writing Tips for Crafting Effective Economics Research Papers – 2023-2024 Edition," IZA Discussion Papers 16276, IZA Network @ LISER.
    2. Rebecca Hamilton & Debora Thompson & Sterling Bone & Lan Nguyen Chaplin & Vladas Griskevicius & Kelly Goldsmith & Ronald Hill & Deborah Roedder John & Chiraag Mittal & Thomas O’Guinn & Paul Piff & Car, 2019. "The effects of scarcity on consumer decision journeys," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 532-550, May.
    3. Leong, Kaiwen & Li, Huailu & Pavanini, Nicola & Walsh, Christoph, 2022. "The Welfare Effects of Law Enforcement in the Illegal Money Lending Market," IZA Discussion Papers 15359, IZA Network @ LISER.
    4. Aidt, Toke & Asatryan, Zareh & Badalyan, Lusine, 2024. "Political consequences of (consumer) debt relief," ZEW Discussion Papers 24-030, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    5. I. Ramsay & T. Williams, 2020. "Peering Forward, 10 Years After: International Policy and Consumer Credit Regulation," Journal of Consumer Policy, Springer, vol. 43(1), pages 209-226, March.
    6. Seth Garz & Xavier Gine & Dean Karlan & Rafe Mazer & Caitlin Sanford & Jonathan Zinman, 2021. "Consumer Protection for Financial Inclusion in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Bridging Regulator and Academic Perspectives," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 13(1), pages 219-246, November.
    7. Altındağ, Onur & O’Connell, Stephen D., 2023. "The short-lived effects of unconditional cash transfers to refugees," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).
    8. Aidt, Toke & Asatryan, Zareh & Badalyan, Lusine, 2022. "Political consequences of consumer debt relief," ZEW Discussion Papers 22-049, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    9. Patrick Sunday Kayongo, 2025. "Re-evaluating the Returns to Labour in Microenterprises: A Statistical Replication and Critical Review of de Mel et al. (2019)," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 68(3), pages 1113-1132, September.
    10. Shika Saravanabhavan & Meenakshi Rajeev, 2024. "Financial inclusion in India: How far do grassroots institutions matter?," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(5), pages 2318-2341, July.
    11. Hassan, Magda & Prabhu, Jaideep & Chandy, Rajesh & Narasimhan, Om, 2023. "When bulldozers loom: informal property rights and marketing practice innovation among emerging market microentrepreneurs," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 114293, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • D18 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Protection
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. Debt Traps? Market Vendors and Moneylender Debt in India and the Philippines (AER: Insights 2019) in ReplicationWiki

    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:aea:aerins:v:1:y:2019:i:1:p:27-42. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.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.