Deregulation,tax reform,and the use of consumer credit

This article analyzes the probable effects of recent deregulation of consumer credit markets and tax reform on household credit-use decisions. The results of the analysis suggest that deregulation of rates of charge for consumer credit contracts accounts for a substantial portion of the increase in consumer credit outstanding relative to household income since 1982. The effect would not originate from the extention of credit in newly deregulated markets to households that had not been able to get credit before (widening of credit use). Rather, it would come from the provision of greater amounts of credit to borrowers in general (deepening of credit use). With regard to tax reform, the probability of debt use is significantly higher for those households most likely to itemize deductions for federal income tax purposes. Holding the level of interest rates constant, tax reform that removes the deductibility of consumer interest is not expected to affect the amount of credit used relative to income but is expected to have a significant effect on the type of debt used by such households. They will likely be early adopters of home equity lines of credit. Their shift from consumer to mortage credit is expected to have a long-term negative effect on the credit quality of consumer credit portfolios.This work was partially supported by the Credit Research Center. Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907.     

Access to consumer credit in the UK

This paper investigates household access to consumer credit in the UK using information on 58,642 households between 2001 and 2009. Employing a treatment-effects model and propensity score matching, we find that non-white households are less likely to have financing compared to white households. We also find that even if they obtain financing, the intensity of borrowing is lower than for white households. Overall, non-white households seem to be in a weaker position to access consumer credit in the UK.     

消费信贷与家庭人力资本投资

已有丰富的文献考察了消费信贷对家庭消费和投资行为的影响，但少有研究关注其对家庭人力资本投资的影响。家庭人力资本投资对于人力资本积累、经济高质量发展至关重要。基于此，本文考察了信用卡使用对家庭人力资本投资的影响及其影响机制，主要发现如下：信用卡使用显著增加了家庭人力资本投资，且这一效应具有长期动态影响并对城市、高收入、高教育程度家庭影响更为显著，这意味着信用卡消费信贷可能会增加人力资本不平等。进一步研究发现，家庭会增加劳动力供给来应对人力资本支出的增加。机制分析表明，信用卡使用主要通过增加家庭消费投资、促进消费升级、缓解家庭预算约束三种途径促进家庭人力资本投资。在风险可控的前提下，引导消费信贷流向有利于实体经济发展的领域，可助力于消费升级与人力资本积累，从而为经济发展提供新动能。     

Bank credit risk and credit information sharing in Africa: Does credit information sharing institutions and context matter?

The study examines credit information sharing through private credit bureaus and public credit registries and their effect on bank credit risk in low and high income countries in Africa. The study covers periods between 2006 and 2012 with 548 bank observations in Africa. Employing a Prais-Winsten panel data estimation, the study established that credit information sharing whether through private credit bureaus or public credit registries reduces bank credit risk in both low and high income countries and Africa as a whole. Further analyses reveal that credit information shared through public credit registries was only negatively and significantly related to bank credit risk when all countries that share credit information through public credit registries are observed as one unit but had no significant effect in low or high income countries. On the contrary, credit information shared through private credit bureaus reported a negative and significant effect on credit risk in low and high income countries as well as all countries that shared information through private credit bureaus. This suggests that credit information shared through private credit bureaus are more robust in dealing with bank credit risk regardless of a banks’ income bracket. Hence, countries that do not share credit information should do so especially through private credit bureaus so as to help reduce bank credit risk regardless of the income bracket differences. Again, governments in Africa must enact laws that expand the coverage and scope of credit information shared so as to enhance the effectiveness of information sharing.     

Macroeconomic Effects of Credit Deepening in Latin America

We augment a standard dynamic general equilibrium model with financial frictions, in order to quantify the macroeconomic effects of the credit deepening process observed in Latin America in the 2000s—most notably in Brazil. In the model, a stylized banking sector intermediates credit from patient households to impatient households and entrepreneurs. Motivated by the Brazilian experience, we allow the credit constraint faced by households to depend on labor income. Our model is designed to isolate the effects of credit deepening through demand-side channels, and abstracts from potential effects of credit supply on total factor productivity. In the calibrated model, credit deepening generates only modest above-trend growth in consumption, investment, and GDP. Since Brazil has experienced one of the most intense credit deepening processes in Latin America, we argue the quantitative effects that hinge on the channels captured by the model are unlikely to be sizable elsewhere in Latin America.     

Internet,consumer spending,and credit card balance: Evidence from US consumers

Utilizing the 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances data, the present study aims to examine the role of the Internet in carrying a credit card balance among US households. The central question of this study is whether or not households with Internet access have more favorable attitudes toward incurring more credit card balance. This study further investigates whether education, income, gender, age, race, etc., make any differences in carrying credit card debt when households have access to the Internet. Our results with the Tobit model show that having access to the Internet increases the probability of carrying a positive credit card balance by 4% to 5% compared to those who do not have access to the Internet. This result does not apply to older Americans. Our results further indicate that education decreases the probability of carrying a positive credit balance for households that have access to the Internet, while income and liquid assets may have little positive effect on that probability. The results suggest that Internet leads to more debt, but education could alleviate that debt.     

基于Logistic回归模型的个人小额贷款信用风险评估及应用

构建二分类 Logistic信用风险评估模型,运用光大银行某分行样本数据,评估商业银行互联网金融个人小额贷款信用风险。结果显示：客户性别、学历、年龄、收入、职业、属地等因素对个人小额贷款信用风险影响显著。其中,年龄、收入、学历等与客户信用等级呈正向关系,女性信用风险显著低于男性,持有信用卡、存贷比越低的客户其信用等级越高;一、二线城市客户的履约率普遍高于县地级市客户的履约率。鉴此,商业银行应对互联网金融个人小额贷款信用风险进行有效规避和分散。     

Banks' Funding Stress,Lending Supply,and Consumption Expenditure

We employ a unique identification strategy linking survey data on household consumption expenditure to bank-level data to estimate the effects of bank funding stress on consumer credit and consumption expenditures. We show that households whose banks were more exposed to funding shocks report lower levels of nonmortgage liabilities. This, however, only translates into lower levels of consumption for low-income households. Hence, adverse credit supply shocks are associated with significant heterogeneous effects.     

High‐Cost Credit and Consumption Smoothing

In this paper, I show that high‐cost credit helps households smooth consumption following periods of temporary financial distress. After experiencing distress—that is, extreme weather events—I find that access to high‐cost payday lending mitigates declines in overall spending and nondurable goods spending generally. The results are particularly concentrated among households with a higher propensity to use payday credit or that have limited alternatives: lower income households, households with less than a college degree, and households with low levels of saving. These results highlight the consumption‐smoothing role that high‐cost credit plays for households with limited access to other types of credit.     

基于客户选择的商业银行汽车信贷风险防范研究

以汽车贷款业务为例,在分析影响汽车贷款客户的个人信息特征基础上,构建Logistic回归模型对客户进行分级管理,以减少商业银行信贷风险。Logistic回归分析的结果表明:贷款人的综合情况由背景资料、贷款情况、财力情况、征信情况四个方面来衡量,其中财力情况更能体现贷款人的信息特征。模型的稳定性检验和返回检验表明该模型有效地区分了客户诚信与否,进而为管理者提供风险防范依据。     

Borrower Self-Selection,Underwriting Costs,and Subprime Mortgage Credit Supply

In the U.S., households participate in two very different types of credit markets. Personal lending is characterized by continuous risk-based pricing in which lenders offer households a continuous distribution of borrowing possibilities based on estimates of their creditworthiness. This contrasts sharply with mortgage markets where lenders specialize in specific risk categories of borrowers and mortgage supply is stepwise linear. The contrast between continuous lending for personal loans and discrete lending by specialized lenders for mortgage credit has led to concerns regarding the efficiency and equity of mortgage lending. This paper sheds both theoretical and empirical light on the differences in the two credit markets. The theory section demonstrates why, in a perfectly competitive credit market where all lenders have the same underwriting technology, mortgage credit supply curves are stepwise linear and lenders specialize in prime or subprime lending. The empirical section then provides evidence that borrowers are being effectively sorted based on risk characteristics by the market.     

Financial literacy and consumer credit portfolios

We use survey data from a sample of UK households to analyse the relationship between financial literacy and consumer credit portfolios. We show that individuals who borrow on consumer credit exhibit worse financial literacy than those who do not. Borrowers with poor financial literacy hold higher shares of high cost credit (such as home collected credit, mail order catalogue debt and payday loans) than those with higher literacy. We also show that individuals with poor financial literacy are more likely to lack confidence when interpreting credit terms, and to exhibit confusion over financial concepts. They are also less likely to engage in behaviour which might help them to improve their awareness of the credit market.     

Legal Restrictions in Personal Loan Markets

This study examines the pricing of personal loans in the form of second mortgages to determine whether state-specific default laws have an effect on the availability and cost of that debt. We examine the pricing of loans to higher risk borrowers and whether borrowers in states that limit lender ability to seek default remedies pay higher credit costs. Our results indicate that, for the most part, lenders rationally price loans to higher risk borrowers. However, when we focus on borrowers with low credit scores, the results indicate that mean actual loan rates are higher than those predicted by our model. The results also indicate that state-specific default laws have an effect on the price of credit. Finally, the results show that there is a greater degree of error in the pricing of second mortgage loans to borrowers with low credit scores than to borrowers with high credit scores.     

信用卡、风险应对与城镇家庭股市参与

信用卡市场的发展有利于家庭平滑消费,但是否会影响家庭的投资决策尚缺少事实检验。基于中国家庭金融调查(CHFS)2011和2013年的调查数据,本文首次检验了信用卡对城镇家庭股市投资的影响。研究发现:(1)控制家庭财富、融资渠道、社会资本等特征,持有信用卡在边际上促进了家庭的股市参与率,股市投资额取决于信用额度。(2)中国信用卡市场的发展,并未像流动性约束理论预测的可以平滑消费,反而刺激了家庭风险性资产的配置,最终提高了储蓄率。原因在于,中国家庭更多地将信用卡作为应对未来短期突发性风险的金融工具,从而在当期将更多资产配置在风险资产上,以实现资本积累。使用信用卡数目、信用额度等多种衡量方式,并采用工具变量法(IV)和面板数据固定效应模型等解决内生性问题后,该结论稳健。该研究有助于理解信用卡在中国家庭投资决策的作用,并为流动性约束或有限股市参与假说提供中国经验。     

中国个人消费信贷状况及风险防范研究

随着个人信用消费的不断扩大,消费信贷的比重不断提高,在整个市场个人信用制度不完善的情况下,个人信贷风险凸现,银行个人信贷中的不良资产率上升。本文从中国消费信贷的总量状况出发,对于银行消费信贷内部结构展开探讨,继而分析消费信贷的客户风险、制度风险及法律政策风险,并以此为基础提出了建立个人信用管理制度、充分利用客户信用分析法、逐步试点个人破产制度、建立银行内控体系及风险转嫁渠道以及完善个人消费信贷的相关法律保障等防范措施。     

An Early Assessment of Residential Mortgage Performance in China

The residential mortgage market becomes a financial engine for the booming residential housing development and sustained economic growth in China. Our study provides the first rigorous empirical analysis on the earlier performance of residential mortgage market in China based on a unique micro dataset of mortgage loan history collected from a major residential mortgage lender in China. We found that while the option theory fails to explain prepayment and default behavior in the residential mortgage market in China, other non-option theory related financial economic factors play major roles in determining the prepayment and default risks in China. We also found that borrower’s characteristics are significant in determining prepayment behavior, hence may be used as an effective tool for screening potential high risk borrowers in the loan origination process. Adopting a risk-based pricing in residential mortgage lending in China can improve the efficiency of the market, and enhance the credit availability to the most needed households, i.e., the younger households, blue-collar workers, lower income households, and help them become homeowners.     

手机分期消费贷款信用风险研究——基于RF-Logistic模型的实证分析

识别手机分期消费贷款违约因子是防范手机消费贷款业务信用风险的关键所在。为此,基于融合随机森林（RF）和逻辑回归（Logistics）两阶段模型,通过数据挖掘揭示风险特征重要性含义,并结合经济计量方法诠释异质性客户信用违约的基准逻辑。结果表明：入网时长、终端个数、客户月流量、终端时长是影响手机分期消费贷款客户信用风险的重要性特征变量,且边际影响分别为-0.039%、3.18%、-0.01%、-1.06%,模型泛化能力强,准确率达到74%。所以,要完善手机分期消费贷款信用风险管理应从交叉数据获取、社交网络、兴趣热点和消费习惯等方面着手。     

北京信贷市场的现状与商业银行的竞争策略研究

研究商业银行在北京的信贷业务竞争策略首先要分析信贷目标行业的价值创造能力，从而确定信贷目标行业的范围。传统经济学对行业的分析强调依赖GDP增长率、资产收益率等绩效指标，其实质都是会计利润，而不是经济利润。本文对商业银行信贷目标行业的分析引入了一种新型的公司业绩衡量指标——经济增加值，它克服了传统指标的缺陷，能更准确地衡量信贷目标行业的价值创造能力，对其分析可总结出商业银行可以进入的信贷行业群为房地产行业群、基础行业群、高技术行业群和文化行业群。最后，本文在理论和实证分析的基础上，提出了商业银行的整体竞争策略、品种竞争策略和行业竞争策略。     

Payday Loan Choices and Consequences

High‐cost consumer credit has proliferated in the past two decades, raising regulatory scrutiny. We match administrative data from a payday lender with nationally representative credit bureau files to examine the choices of payday loan applicants and assess whether payday loans help or harm borrowers. We find consumers apply for payday loans when they have limited access to mainstream credit. In addition, the weakness of payday applicants’ credit histories is severe and longstanding. Based on regression discontinuity estimates, we show that the effects of payday borrowing on credit scores and other measures of financial well‐being are close to zero. We test the robustness of these null effects to many factors, including features of the local market structure.     

Local Currency Sovereign Risk

We introduce a new measure of emerging market sovereign credit risk: the local currency credit spread, defined as the spread of local currency bonds over the synthetic local currency risk‐free rate constructed using cross‐currency swaps. We find that local currency credit spreads are positive and sizable. Compared with credit spreads on foreign‐currency‐denominated debt, local currency credit spreads have lower means, lower cross‐country correlations, and lower sensitivity to global risk factors. We discuss several major sources of credit spread differentials, including positively correlated credit and currency risk, selective default, capital controls, and various financial market frictions.