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Working Paper
The Effects of Mortgage Credit Availability : Evidence from Minimum Credit Score Lending Rules
Since the housing bust and financial crisis, mortgage lenders have introduced progressively higher minimum thresholds for acceptable credit scores. Using loan-level data, we document the introduction of these thresholds, as well as their effects on the distribution of newly originated mortgages. We then use the timing and nonlinearity of these supply-side changes to credibly identify their short- and medium-run effects on various individual outcomes. Using a large panel of consumer credit data, we show that the credit score thresholds have very large negative effects on borrowing in the short ...
Working Paper
The Consequences of Gentrification: A Focus on Residents’ Financial Health in Philadelphia
There have been considerable debate and controversy about the effects of gentrification on neighborhoods and the people residing in them. This paper draws on a unique large-scale consumer credit database to examine the relationship between gentrification and the credit scores of residents in the City of Philadelphia from 2002 to 2014. We find that gentrification is positively associated with changes in residents? credit scores on average for those who stay, and this relationship is stronger for residents in neighborhoods in the more advanced stages of gentrification. Gentrification is also ...
Working Paper
Credit Scores and Committed Relationships
This paper presents novel evidence on the role of credit scores in the dynamics of committed relationships. We document substantial positive assortative matching with respect to credit scores, even when controlling for other socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. As a result, individual-level differences in access to credit are largely preserved at the household level. Moreover, we find that the couples' average level of and the match quality in credit scores, measured at the time of relationship formation, are highly predictive of subsequent separations. This result arises, in part, ...
Journal Article
Changing Credit Profile of Consumers: Aging Versus the Business Cycle
The average consumer credit score reached a record high recently. While some commentators attributed this development to the cyclical rebound from the Great Recession, I find that the changing age distribution of credit applicants also played a significant role. Changes in demographics alone can explain 43 percent of the increase in the average score from 1999:Q1 to 2017:Q2.
Working Paper
A Quantitative Theory of the Credit Score
What is the role of credit scores in credit markets? We argue that it is a stand in for a market assessment of a person's unobservable type (which here we take to be patience). We pose a model of persistent hidden types where observable actions shape the public assessment of a person's type via Bayesian updating. We show how dynamic reputation can incentivize repayment without monetary costs of default beyond the administrative cost of filing for bankruptcy. Importantly we show how an economy with credit scores implements the same equilibrium allocation. We estimate the model using both ...
Working Paper
Gentrification and residential mobility in Philadelphia
Gentrification has provoked considerable debate and controversy about its effects on neighborhoods and the people residing in them. This paper draws on a unique large-scale consumer credit database to examine the mobility patterns of residents in gentrifying neighborhoods in the city of Philadelphia from 2002 to 2014. We find significant heterogeneity in the effects of gentrification across neighborhoods and subpopulations. Residents in gentrifying neighborhoods have slightly higher mobility rates than those in nongentrifying neighborhoods, but they do not have a higher risk of moving to a ...
Working Paper
Credit Scores, Social Capital, and Stock Market Participation
While a rapidly growing body of research underscores the influence of social capital on financial decisions and economic developments, objective data-based measurements of social capital are lacking. We introduce average credit scores as an indicator of a community's social capital and present evidence that this measure is consistent with, but richer and more robust than, those used in the existing literature, such as electoral participation, blood donations, and survey-based measures. Merging unique proprietary credit score data with two nationwide representative household surveys, we show ...