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Discussion Paper
An Overview of Credit-Building Products
Credit-building products are secured small-dollar products that allow consumers to either establish or improve their credit scores by having lenders report their payment activity to credit bureaus. Examples include secured credit cards or loan products such as credit-builder and passbook loans.
Working Paper
Implications of Student Loan COVID-19 Pandemic Relief Measures for Families with Children
The initial years of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic fallout likely posed particular financial strain on U.S. households with children, who faced income disruptions from widespread jobs and hours cuts in addition to new childcare and instruction demands. One common expense for many such households is their student loan payment. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act included provisions to curb the impacts of these payments, which have been extended several times. These measures were not targeted and thus applied independent of need. This chapter ...
Working Paper
The Multiplier Effect of Education Expenditure
This paper examines the short-run effects of federal education expenditures on local income. We exploit city-level variation in exposure to national changes in the $30-billion Federal Pell Grant Program, which is the largest program to help low-income students attend college in the U.S., to calculate fiscal multipliers of education expenditures. An increase in Pell grants by 1 percent of a city's income raises local income by 2.4 percent over the next two years. This multiplier effect is larger than estimates for military spending (1.5 on average). Multipliers are higher when grants are ...
Discussion Paper
FinTech-Issued Personal Loans in the U.S.
The financial technology advances of the past decade brought to prominence a new group of lenders active within the personal loan space—financial technology (FinTech) lenders. Although traditional lenders such as banks, thrifts, credit unions, and finance companies continue to play an important role in providing personal loans to consumers, FinTech lenders gained a notable market share.