Credit supply to personal bankruptcy filers: evidence from credit card mailings

Song Han, Benjamin Keys and Geng Li

No 2011-29, Finance and Economics Discussion Series from Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.)

Abstract: Are consumers who have filed for personal bankruptcy before excluded from the unsecured credit market? Using a unique data set of credit card mailings, we directly explore the supply of unsecured credit to consumers with the most conspicuous default risk--those with a bankruptcy history. On average, over one-fifth of personal bankruptcy filers receive at least one offer in a given month, with the likelihood being even higher for those who filed for bankruptcy within the previous two years. However, offers to bankruptcy filers carry substantially less favorable terms than those to comparable consumers without a bankruptcy history, with higher interest rates, lower credit limits, a greater likelihood of having an annual fee, and a smaller likelihood of having rewards or promotions. In addition, our analysis of credit terms typically disclosed only in the fine print suggests that offers to filers tend to include more \"hidden\" costs.

Keywords: Bankruptcy; Credit cards; Consumer credit; Finance, Personal (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban and nep-mkt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2011/201129/201129abs.html (text/html)
http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2011/201129/201129pap.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2011-29

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Finance and Economics Discussion Series from Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ryan Wolfslayer ; Keisha Fournillier ().