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Targeted Debt Relief and the Origins of Financial Distress: Experimental Evidence from Distressed Credit Card Borrowers

Will Dobbie and Jae Song
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Jae Song: Social Security Administration

Working Paper Series from Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government

Abstract: We study the drivers of financial distress using a large-scale field experiment that offered randomly selected borrowers a combination of (i) immediate payment reductions to target short-run liquidity constraints and (ii) delayed interest write-downs to target long-run debt constraints. We identify the separate effects of the payment reductions and interest write-downs using both the experiment and cross-sectional variation in treatment intensity. We find that the interest write-downs significantly improved both financial and labor market outcomes, despite not taking effect for three to five years. In sharp contrast, there were no positive effects of the more immediate payment reductions. These results run counter to the widespread view that financial distress is largely the result of short-run constraints.

Date: 2019-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-pay
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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https://research.hks.harvard.edu/publications/getFile.aspx?Id=3835

Related works:
Journal Article: Targeted Debt Relief and the Origins of Financial Distress: Experimental Evidence from Distressed Credit Card Borrowers (2020) Downloads
Working Paper: Targeted Debt Relief and the Origins of Financial Distress: Experimental Evidence from Distressed Credit Card Borrowers (2017) Downloads
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ecl:harjfk:rwp19-030

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