Thousands of U.S. households filed for bankruptcy just before the bankruptcy law changed in 2005. That rush-to-file was more pronounced, we find, in states with more generous bankruptcy exemptions and lower credit scores. We take that finding as evidence that the new law effectively reduces exemptions, which in turn should reduce the “demand” for bankruptcy and the resulting losses to suppliers...

Soft-products are intangible products that can be consumed without shipment, such as software, music and calling cards (calling time). The demand for soft-products on the Internet has been increasing for the past few years. At the same time, fraudulent credit card transactions have also increased. Compared to tangible products, fraudulent credit card transactions on soft-products are easier to ...

Consumer credit is any of the many forms of commerce under which an individual obtains goods or services on condition of a promise to pay for their value, along with a fee (the interest), at some specific future date or dates. Consumer credit can take a variety of forms: bank loans, credit cards, retailer’s card, car finance schemes, etc. In industrialized countries, this form of credit has bec...

We utilize a unique pair of experiments to isolate the ways in which reductions in asymmetric information alter credit market outcomes. A Guatemalan microfinance lender gradually started using a credit bureau across its branches without letting borrowers know about it. One year later, we ran a large randomized credit information course that described the existence and workings of the bureau to ...

Soft-products are intangible products that can be consumed without shipment, such as software, music and calling cards (calling time). The demand for soft-products on the Internet has been increasing for the past few years. At the same time, fraudulent credit card transactions have also increased. Compared to tangible products, fraudulent credit card transactions on soft-products are easier to ...

The standard model of pass-through in imperfectly competitive markets focuses on double marginalization of rents and highlights the importance of the curvature of demand curve. We develop a model of equilibrium prices in a supply chain with financing intermediaries to incorporate credit rationing faced by wholesale traders. The financing intermediaries help relax the quantitative credit limits ...

Essays on Banking and Local Credit Markets by Hoai-Luu Q. Nguyen Submitted to the Department of Economics on May 15, 2015, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy This thesis consists of three chapters on banking and local credit markets. The first chapter studies the relationship between bank-specific capital and credit access in a new setting: bank br...