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Jel Classification:D14 

Working Paper
Stress Testing Household Debt

We estimate a county-level model of household delinquency and use it to conduct "stress tests" of household debt. Applying house price and unemployment rate shocks from Comprehensive Capital Analysis Review (CCAR) stress tests, we find that forecasted delinquency rates for the recent stock of debt are moderately lower than for the stock of debt before the 2007-09 financial crisis, given the same set of shocks. This decline in expected delinquency rates under stress reflects an improvement in debt-to-income ratios and an increase in the share of debt held by borrowers with relatively high ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2019-008

Report
Consumer Payment Choice for Bill Payments

Why do U.S. consumers pay their bills the way they do? Using data from a recent diary of consumer payment behavior, we find that the type of bill consumers are paying and how they are paying (online or automatically) are important factors in determining the payment method, in addition to the dollar value of the bill and the demographic and income profile of the individual who is paying. In contrast, dollar value and demographic attributes are found to be the most important factors determining the payment instrument chosen for purchases. Consumer choices for bill payments are somewhat ...
Consumer Payments Research Data Reports , Paper 2020-05

Working Paper
Who is screened out of social insurance programs by entry barriers? Evidence from consumer bankruptcies

Entry barriers into social insurance programs will be effective screening devices if they cause only those individuals receiving higher benefits from a program to participate in that program. We find evidence for this by using plausibly exogenous variations in travel-related entry costs into the Canadian consumer bankruptcy system. Using detailed balance sheet and travel data, we find that higher travel-related entry costs reduce bankruptcies from individuals with lower financial benefits of bankruptcy (unsecured debt discharged, minus secured assets forgone). When compared across filers, ...
Working Papers , Paper 15-40

Discussion Paper
Debt Relief and the CARES Act: Which Borrowers Face the Most Financial Strain?

In yesterday's post, we studied the expected debt relief from the CARES Act on mortgagors and student debt borrowers. We now turn our attention to the 63 percent of American borrowers who do not have a mortgage or student loan. These borrowers will not directly benefit from the loan forbearance provisions of the CARES Act, although they may be able to receive some types of leniency that many lenders have voluntarily provided. We ask who these borrowers are, by age, geography, race and income, and how does their financial health compare with other borrowers.
Liberty Street Economics , Paper 20200819

Report
What would you do with $500? Spending responses to gains, losses, news, and loans

We use survey questions about spending to investigate features of propensities to consume that are useful for distinguishing between consumption theories. Asking households about their intended spending under various scenarios, we find that 1) responses to unanticipated gains are vastly heterogeneous (either zero or substantially positive), 2) responses to losses are much larger and more widespread than responses to gains, and 3) even those with large responses to gains do not respond to news about future gains. These three findings suggest that limited access to disposable resources is an ...
Staff Reports , Paper 843

Working Paper
Villains or Scapegoats? The Role of Subprime Borrowers in Driving the U.S. Housing Boom

An expansion in mortgage credit to subprime borrowers is widely believed to have been a principal driver of the 2002?06 U.S. house price boom. Contrary to this belief, we show that the house price and subprime booms occurred in different places. Counties with the largest home price appreciation between 2002 and 2006 had the largest declines in the share of purchase mortgages to subprime borrowers. We also document that the expansion in speculative mortgage products and underwriting fraud was not concentrated among subprime borrowers.
FRB Atlanta Working Paper , Paper 2018-10

Working Paper
End of the Line: Behavior of HELOC Borrowers Facing Payment Changes

An important question in the household finance literature is whether a change in required debt payments affects borrower behavior. One challenge in this literature has been identifying whether higher default rates observed after an increase in debt payments stem from the inability of borrowers to pay the higher amount, or the attrition of better borrowers in advance of the payment change. A related question is whether the higher default rate is a result of specific features of the debt product, or the type of borrower who chooses the product. We address both of these questions as they relate ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2015-73

Discussion Paper
Three Key Facts from the Center for Microeconomic Data’s 2022 Student Loan Update

Today, researchers from the Center for Microeconomic Data released the 2022 Student Loan Update, which contains statistics summarizing who holds student loans along with characteristics of these balances. To compute these statistics, we use the New York Fed Consumer Credit Panel (CCP), a nationally representative 5 percent sample of all U.S. adults with an Equifax credit report. For this update, we focus on individuals with a student loan on their credit report. The update is linked here and shared in the student debt section of the Center for Microeconomic Data’s website. In this post, we ...
Liberty Street Economics , Paper 20220809

Discussion Paper
Consumer Payment Preferences and the Impact of Technology and Regulation: Insights from the Visa Payment Panel Study

The Consumer Finance Institute hosted a workshop in August 2018 featuring Michael Marx, senior director at Visa, Inc., to discuss recent data from the Visa Payment Panel, highlighting the evolution of consumer payment preferences since the Great Recession and the passage of the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009. A number of intriguing trends were discussed. Debit card adoption and growth have shown signs of slowing, even as regulatory changes have increased its prevalence recently among younger consumers. Credit card usage continues to grow and has ...
Consumer Finance Institute discussion papers , Paper 19-1

Working Paper
Dynamic Pricing of Credit Cards and the Effects of Regulation

We construct a two-period model of revolving credit with asymmetric information and adverse selection.In the second period, lenders exploit an informational advantage with respect to their own customers. Those rents stimulate competition for customers in the first period. The informational advantage the current lender enjoys relative to its competitors determines interest rates, credit supply, and switching behavior. We evaluate the consequences of limiting the repricing of existing balances as implemented by recent legislation. Such restrictions increase deadweight losses and reduce ex ante ...
Working Papers , Paper 18-23

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