Does Knowing Your FICO Score Change Financial Behavior? Evidence from a Field Experiment with Student Loan Borrowers

Tatiana Homonoff, Rourke O'Brien and Abigail B. Sussman

No 26048, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: One in five consumer credit accounts incur late fees each quarter. Evidence on the efficacy of regulations to improve behavior through enhanced disclosure of financial product attributes is mixed. We test a novel form of disclosure that provides borrowers with a personalized measure of their creditworthiness. In a field experiment with over 400,000 student loan borrowers, treatment group members received communications about the availability of their FICO Score. The intervention significantly reduced late payments and increased borrowers’ FICO Scores. Survey data show treatment group members were less likely to overestimate their FICO Scores, suggesting the intervention may correct for overoptimism.

JEL-codes: D14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
Note: ED PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published as Tatiana Homonoff & Rourke O'Brien & Abigail B. Sussman, 2021. "Does Knowing Your FICO Score Change Financial Behavior? Evidence from a Field Experiment with Student Loan Borrowers," The Review of Economics and Statistics, vol 103(2), pages 236-250.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w26048.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Does Knowing Your FICO Score Change Financial Behavior? Evidence from a Field Experiment with Student Loan Borrowers (2021)
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:nbr:nberwo:26048

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w26048

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().