Does it pay to read your junk mail? evidence of the effect of advertising on home equity credit choices

Sumit Agarwal and Brent Ambrose

No WP-08-09, Working Paper Series from Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

Abstract: We examine the effect of direct mail (commonly referred to as junk mail) advertising on individual financial decisions by studying consumer choice of home equity debt contracts. Consistent with the theoretical predictions, we find that financial variables underlying the relative pricing of debt contracts are the leading factors explaining consumers home equity debt choice. Furthermore, we also find that the intended use of debt proceeds significantly impacts consumer choice. However, when we study a subset of consumers who received a direct mail solicitation for a particular debt contract (fixed versus adjustable-rate), we find evidence that the relative pricing variables are less relevant in explaining consumer contract choice, even though they were presented with a full menu of debt contracts. Thus, our results are consistent with the persuasive view of advertising.

Keywords: Home equity loans; Advertising (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mkt and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.chicagofed.org/digital_assets/publicati ... s/2008/wp2008_09.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:fedhwp:wp-08-09

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lauren Wiese ().