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Do bankers prefer married couples?

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  • Marion Leturcq

    (CREST - Centre de Recherche en Économie et Statistique - ENSAI - Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Analyse de l'Information [Bruz] - X - École polytechnique - ENSAE Paris - École Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Administration Économique - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement)

Abstract

Are married couples more credit constrained than unmarried households? If the cost of separation increases the risk of default, banks might be willing to lend to stable couples. In presence of incomplete information, marriage could be used as a signal of the quality of the match. This paper investigates the link between marriage and credit constraints. I use matching methods to evaluate the impact of marriage on credit constraints. I find that married couples are more likely to be approved for their loan, but they bear higher costs of credit. The differences between married and unmarried couples can be attributed to selection in the marriage rather than to discrimination against unmarried couples.

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  • Marion Leturcq, 2011. "Do bankers prefer married couples?," Working Papers halshs-00655584, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-00655584
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00655584
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    1. Marion Leturcq, 2011. "Competing marital contracts? The marriage after civil union in France," Working Papers halshs-00655585, HAL.

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    Keywords

    marriage; credit constraints; signal; matching estimator;
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