Payday Loans and Credit Cards: New Liquidity and Credit Scoring Puzzles?

Sumit Agarwal, Paige M. Skiba and Jeremy Tobacman

No 14659, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Using a unique dataset matched at the individual level from two administrative sources, we examine household choices between liabilities and assess the informational content of prime and subprime credit scores in the consumer credit market. First, more specifically, we assess consumers' effectiveness at prioritizing use of their lowest-cost credit option. We find that most borrowers from one payday lender who also have a credit card from a major credit card issuer have substantial credit card liquidity on the days they take out their payday loans. This is costly because payday loans have annualized interest rates of at least several hundred percent, though perhaps partly explained by the fact that borrowers have experienced substantial declines in credit card liquidity in the year leading up to the payday loan. Second, we show that FICO scores and Teletrack scores have independent information and are specialized for the types of lending where they are used. Teletrack scores have eight times the predictive power for payday loan default as FICO scores. We also show that prime lenders should value information about their borrowers' subprime activity. Taking out a payday loan predicts nearly a doubling in the probability of serious credit card delinquency over the next year.

JEL-codes: D03 D14 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban and nep-ure
Note: IO ME
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (84)

Published as Agarwal, Sumit, Paige Marta Skiba, and Jeremy Tobacman. "Payday Loans and Credit Cards: New Liquidity and Credit Scoring Puzzles?" American Economic Review 99, 2 (2009): 412-417.

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Journal Article: Payday Loans and Credit Cards: New Liquidity and Credit Scoring Puzzles? (2009)
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