IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedbwp/18-7.html

Some searches may not work properly. We apologize for the inconvenience.

   My bibliography  Save this paper

Credit card debt and consumer payment choice: what can we learn from credit bureau data?

Author

Listed:
  • Joanna Stavins

Abstract

We estimate a two-stage Heckman selection model of credit card adoption and use with a unique dataset that combines administrative data from the Equifax credit bureau and self-reported data from the Survey of Consumer Payment Choice, a representative survey of US consumers. Even though the survey data from the borrowers vary somewhat from the data provided by the lenders, the results based on the merged data are qualitatively similar to those based exclusively on self-reported surveys. This finding suggests that if administrative data are not available, it might be sufficient to use survey data to estimate consumer behavior. We find that credit card revolvers have lower income and are less educated than other cardholders. Although consumers who carry credit card debt might be liquidity constrained and not have cheaper borrowing alternatives, the high cost of paying off credit card debt could exacerbate existing inequalities in disposable income among consumers.

Suggested Citation

  • Joanna Stavins, 2018. "Credit card debt and consumer payment choice: what can we learn from credit bureau data?," Working Papers 18-7, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedbwp:18-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/research-department-working-paper/2018/credit-card-debt-and-consumer-payment-choice.aspx
    File Function: Sumary
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.bostonfed.org/-/media/Documents/Workingpapers/PDF/2018/wp1807.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Claire Greene & Scott Schuh & Joanna Stavins, 2017. "The 2015 Survey of Consumer Payment Choice: summary results," Research Data Report 17-3, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    2. Michael Hurd & Susann Rohwedder, 2009. "Methodological Innovations in Collecting Spending Data: The HRS Consumption and Activities Mail Survey," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 30(Special I), pages 435-459, December.
    3. James J. Heckman, 1976. "The Common Structure of Statistical Models of Truncation, Sample Selection and Limited Dependent Variables and a Simple Estimator for Such Models," NBER Chapters, in: Annals of Economic and Social Measurement, Volume 5, number 4, pages 475-492, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Jonathan Zinman, 2009. "Where Is The Missing Credit Card Debt? Clues And Implications," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 55(2), pages 249-265, June.
    5. Imbens, Guido W. & Lemieux, Thomas, 2008. "Regression discontinuity designs: A guide to practice," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 615-635, February.
    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. Kenneth P. Brevoort, 2011. "Credit Card Redlining Revisited," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(2), pages 714-724, May.
    8. Dean Karlan & Jonathan Zinman, 2008. "Lying About Borrowing," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(2-3), pages 510-521, 04-05.
    9. Scott L. Fulford & Scott Schuh, 2017. "Credit card utilization and consumption over the life cycle and business cycle," Working Papers 17-14, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    10. Stephan Meier & Charles Sprenger, 2010. "Present-Biased Preferences and Credit Card Borrowing," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(1), pages 193-210, January.
    11. Meta Brown & Andrew F. Haughwout & Donghoon Lee & Wilbert Van der Klaauw, 2015. "Do we know what we owe? Consumer debt as reported by borrowers and lenders," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, issue 21-1, pages 19-44.
    12. Paul S. Calem & Julapa Jagtiani & William W. Lang, 2017. "Foreclosure Delay and Consumer Credit Performance," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 52(3), pages 225-251, December.
    13. Schuh, Scott & Stavins, Joanna, 2010. "Why are (some) consumers (finally) writing fewer checks? The role of payment characteristics," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(8), pages 1745-1758, August.
    14. 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.
    15. Agarwal, Sumit & Ambrose, Brent W. & Liu, Chunlin, 2006. "Credit Lines and Credit Utilization," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 38(1), pages 1-22, February.
    16. Shubhasis Dey & Gene Mumy, 2005. "Determinants of Borrowing Limits on Credit Cards," Staff Working Papers 05-7, Bank of Canada.
    17. Sergei Koulayev & Marc Rysman & Scott Schuh & Joanna Stavins, 2016. "Explaining adoption and use of payment instruments by US consumers," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 47(2), pages 293-325, May.
    18. Musto, David K. & Souleles, Nicholas S., 2006. "A portfolio view of consumer credit," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 59-84, January.
    19. Geetesh Bhardwaj & Rajdeep Sengupta, 2011. "Credit scoring and loan default," Working Papers 2011-040, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    20. Ching, Andrew T. & Hayashi, Fumiko, 2010. "Payment card rewards programs and consumer payment choice," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(8), pages 1773-1787, August.
    21. Paula Lopes, 2008. "Credit Card Debt and Default over the Life Cycle," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 40(4), pages 769-790, June.
    22. Edward Castronova & Paul Hagstrom, 2004. "The Demand for Credit Cards: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 42(2), pages 304-318, April.
    23. Heckman, James J. & Robb, Richard Jr., 1985. "Alternative methods for evaluating the impact of interventions : An overview," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1-2), pages 239-267.
    24. Benjamin J. Keys & Tanmoy Mukherjee & Amit Seru & Vikrant Vig, 2010. "Did Securitization Lead to Lax Screening? Evidence from Subprime Loans," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(1), pages 307-362.
    25. Riza Emekter & Yanbin Tu & Benjamas Jirasakuldech & Min Lu, 2015. "Evaluating credit risk and loan performance in online Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(1), pages 54-70, January.
    26. Marco Angrisani & Kevin Foster & Marcin Hitczenko, 2017. "The 2015 Survey of Consumer Payment Choice: technical appendix," Research Data Report 17-4, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    27. Insik Min & Jong-Ho Kim, 2003. "Modeling Credit Card Borrowing: A Comparison of Type I and Type II Tobit Approaches," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 70(1), pages 128-143, July.
    28. Margaret Grosh & Paul Glewwe, 2000. "Designing Household Survey Questionnaires for Developing Countries," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 25338, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Scott L. Fulford & Scott Schuh, 2023. "Revolving versus Convenience Use of Credit Cards: Evidence from U.S. Credit Bureau Data," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 55(7), pages 1667-1701, October.
    2. Swanton, Thomas B. & Gainsbury, Sally M., 2020. "Debt stress partly explains the relationship between problem gambling and comorbid mental health problems," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 265(C).
    3. Di Johnson & John Rodwell & Thomas Hendry, 2021. "Analyzing the Impacts of Financial Services Regulation to Make the Case That Buy-Now-Pay-Later Regulation Is Failing," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-20, February.
    4. Catalina Anampa Castro & Katherine Curtis & Jack DeWaard & Elizabeth Fussell & Kathryn McConnell & Kobie Price & Michael Soto & Stephan D. Whitaker, 2021. "Migration as a Vector of Economic Losses from Disaster-Affected Areas in the United States," Working Papers 21-22, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    5. Claire Greene & Joanna Stavins, 2022. "Credit Card Debt Puzzle: Liquid Assets to Pay Bills," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2022-9, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    6. Krivorotov, George, 2023. "Machine learning-based profit modeling for credit card underwriting - implications for credit risk," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    7. Michiel Bijlsma & Carin Cruijsen & Nicole Jonker, 2023. "Consumer Willingness to Share Payments Data: Trust for Sale?," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 64(1), pages 41-80, August.
    8. Liu Hong Shan & Kenny S. L. Cheah & Serrene Leong, 2023. "Leading Generation Z’s Financial Literacy Through Financial Education: Contemporary Bibliometric and Content Analysis in China," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(3), pages 21582440231, August.
    9. Świecka, Beata & Terefenko, Paweł & Paprotny, Dominik, 2021. "Transaction factors’ influence on the choice of payment by Polish consumers," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 58(C).

    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. Joanna Stavins, 2017. "How do consumers make their payment choices?," Research Data Report 17-1, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    2. Tamás Briglevics & Scott Schuh, 2020. "This Is What's in Your Wallet...and Here's How You Use It," Working Papers 20-04, Department of Economics, West Virginia University.
    3. Bruno Karoubi & Régis Chenavaz & Corina Paraschiv, 2016. "Consumers’ perceived risk and hold and use of payment instruments," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(14), pages 1317-1329, March.
    4. Schuh, Scott & Stavins, Joanna, 2010. "Why are (some) consumers (finally) writing fewer checks? The role of payment characteristics," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(8), pages 1745-1758, August.
    5. Tobias Trütsch, 2016. "The impact of mobile payment on payment choice," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 30(3), pages 299-336, August.
    6. Arango, Carlos & Huynh, Kim P. & Sabetti, Leonard, 2015. "Consumer payment choice: Merchant card acceptance versus pricing incentives," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 130-141.
    7. Naoki Wakamori & Angelika Welte, 2017. "Why Do Shoppers Use Cash? Evidence from Shopping Diary Data," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 49(1), pages 115-169, February.
    8. Michael Cohen & Marc Rysman, 2012. "Payment choice with consumer panel data," Working Papers 13, University of Connecticut, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Charles J. Zwick Center for Food and Resource Policy.
    9. Fumiko Hayashi & Joanna Stavins, 2012. "Effects of credit scores on consumer payment choice," Public Policy Discussion Paper 12-1, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    10. Leigh Ann Leung & Catherine Lau, 2017. "Effect of mortgage indebtedness on health of U.S. homeowners," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 239-264, March.
    11. Stephanie Moulton & Cäzilia Loibl & Anya Samak & J. Michael Collins, 2013. "Borrowing Capacity and Financial Decisions of Low-to-Moderate Income First-Time Homebuyers," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(3), pages 375-403, November.
    12. Lola Hernandez & Nicole Jonker & Anneke Kosse, 2017. "Cash versus Debit Card: The Role of Budget Control," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(1), pages 91-112, March.
    13. Scott L. Fulford & Scott Schuh, 2023. "Revolving versus Convenience Use of Credit Cards: Evidence from U.S. Credit Bureau Data," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 55(7), pages 1667-1701, October.
    14. Kim Huynh & Jozsef Molnar & Oleksandr Shcherbakov & Qinghui Yu, 2020. "Demand for Payment Services and Consumer Welfare: The Introduction of a Central Bank Digital Currency," Staff Working Papers 20-7, Bank of Canada.
    15. John Bagnall & David Bounie & Kim P. Huynh & Anneke Kosse & Tobias Schmidt & Scott Schuh, 2016. "Consumer Cash Usage: A Cross-Country Comparison with Payment Diary Survey Data," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 12(4), pages 1-61, December.
    16. Stavins, Joanna & Shy, Oz, 2015. "Merchant steering of consumer payment choice: Evidence from a 2012 diary survey," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 1-9.
    17. Agnieszka Huterska & Anna Iwona Piotrowska & Joanna Szalacha-Jarmużek, 2021. "Fear of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Social Distancing as Factors Determining the Change in Consumer Payment Behavior at Retail and Service Outlets," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(14), pages 1-18, July.
    18. Eid, Nourhan & Maltby, Josephine & Talavera, Oleksandr, 2016. "Income Rounding and Loan Performance in the Peer-to-Peer Market," MPRA Paper 72852, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Carlos A. Arango-Arango & Héctor M. Zárate-Solano & Nicolás F. Suárez-Ariza, 2017. "Determinantes del Acceso, Uso y Aceptación de Pagos Electrónicos en Colombia," Borradores de Economia 999, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    20. Donou-Adonsou, Ficawoyi & Basnet, Hem C., 2019. "Credit card delinquency: How much is the Internet to blame?," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 481-497.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    credit card debt; consumer payments; consumer preferences;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages

    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:fedbwp:18-7. 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: Catherine Spozio (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbbous.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.