I n this study we designed to test the remarkable repayment performance of Akhuwat in Pakistan; the most successful Islamic Microfinance Institution (IMFI), which offers interest-free loans in order to improve the quality of life and alleviate poverty. The model of Akhuwat is based on Muakhaat (brotherhood) and Qard-e-Hasan (offering financial assi...

Are regulations on the payday loan effective? Do people switch to other forms of expensive credit such as pawnshop loans because of such regulations? In this study, we aim to find the answers to these two questions through exploring state-level variations in regulations on payday loans and other alternative financial services. Using FDIC’s panel survey data and Google Trends data, we find that ...

This paper examines the necessity of regulating the Iranian card payments system (SHAPARAK) based on the theory of two-sided markets. The expansion of the payment card system in recent years has arisen some questions regarding the role of all kinds of costs and expenses such as interchange fees, cardholder fees, merchant fees, and network externality in balancing the market. Since there is only...

Poor households try to save and to borrow to smooth consumption in the face of low and uncertain streams of income. They are constrained by credit limits and by the spread between the price paid for loans (borrowing) and the price earned for deposits (saving). Models of household choices that include all these facts are intractable. I use orthogonal polynomial projection methods to solve a Bell...

mortgage debt market and thereby increase the losses lenders experience on loan defaults. The popularity of nontraditional mortgage loans, such as interest-only loans and adjustable-rate loans that permit negative amortization (“option ARMS”), raises additional concern about default risk because such loans expose borrowers to more interest-rate and house-price risk than traditional fixed-rate, ...

In adjustable interest loans the borrower assumes the risk of interest rate rising, which leads to the growth of loan annuities. Given the importance of this risk in both corporate and personal finance, it is a recurrent topic in economic and financial press. In this paper, we show that the duration of a loan with constant annuity and interest rate can be used to assess the sensitivity of payme...

During the 1980s, Congress passed a number of laws deregulating the US banking system and home loan process. Within a decade, this caused the demise of many savings and loans and has had major effects on banking into the twenty-first century. Several pieces of legislation have contributed to deregulation of the industry including Graham Leach Bliley and the Deregulation Monetary Control Act. In...

Studying consumer financing decisions is difficult because of endogeneity problems and scarce data. We use new data and an exogenous change in an interest rate ceiling facing consumers seeking loans from an online peer-to-peer lending intermediary to test how access to finance affects consumers’ borrowing decisions. A differences-in-differences approach reveals that good access to local bank fi...

This paper analyzes the adjustments in the structure of assets and liabilities of the Austrian banking sector taking place after a monetary tightening. Following increases in short-term interest rates, the share of loans to non-banks in interest-earning assets rises, which is at odds with predictions from the bank lending channel of monetary policy transmission. An extension of credit to nonfin...