Search Results
Working Paper
Navigating Higher Education Insurance: An Experimental Study on Demand and Adverse Selection
We conduct a survey-based experiment with 2,776 students at a non-profit university to analyze income insurance demand in education financing. We offered students a hypothetical choice: either a federal loan with income-driven repayment or an income-share agreement (ISA), with randomized framingof downside protections. Emphasizing income insurance increased ISA uptake by 43%. We observe that students are responsive to changes in contract terms and possible student loan cancellation, which is evidence of preference adjustment or adverse selection. Our results indicate that framing specific ...
Report
Beyond the Minimum: Excess Student Loan Payments in Summer and Fall 2023
We provided a view into borrower expectations for resumed payments on the eve of the student loan payment pause coming to an end in our previous report, which was the first in our series on student loan payments resumption. Our report showed that most borrowers successfully resumed payments and expected to continue being able to make payments through the end of 2023, but segments of the student borrower population have not resolved their repayment struggles despite available relief. The trends we identified in the data reflected any debt cancellation granted to borrowers in 2023, loan payoffs ...
Working Paper
Financial Consequences of Severe Identity Theft in the U.S.
We examine how a negative shock from severe identity theft affects consumer credit market behavior in the United States. We show that the immediate effects of severe identity theft on credit files are typically negative, small, and transitory. After those immediate effects fade, identity theft victims experience persistent increases in credit scores and declines in reported delinquencies, with a significant proportion of affected consumers transitioning from subprime-to-prime credit scores. Those consumers take advantage of their improved creditworthiness to obtain additional credit, ...
Discussion Paper
Consumer financial protection regulations: how do they measure up?
The Payment Cards Center's September 2012 policy conference advanced the discussion of targeted design and outcome measurement as central features of public policy in the area of consumer financial protections. Speakers considered regulations addressing the disclosure of credit terms; standards for assessing the unfairness, deceptiveness, and abusiveness of lending acts or practices; the management of revolving credit accounts; and the challenges of analyzing consumer complaints in the context of consumer financial protections. The concluding panel discussed unanswered questions and research ...
Working Paper
Financial Consequences of Identity Theft: Evidence from Consumer Credit Bureau Records
This paper examines how a negative shock to the security of personal finances due to severe identity theft changes consumer credit behavior. Using a unique data set of consumer credit records and alerts indicating identity theft and the exogenous timing of victimization, we show that the immediate effects of fraud on credit files are typically negative, small, and transitory. After those immediate effects fade, identity theft victims experience persistent, positive changes in credit characteristics, including improved Risk Scores. Consumers also exhibit caution with credit by having fewer ...
Discussion Paper
Do we still need the Equal Credit Opportunity Act?
The Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) prohibits discrimination in any aspect of a credit transaction based on sex, marital status, race, ethnicity, age, or other specified factors. Regulation B implementing the ECOA, a applied by the courts, requires that financial institutions challenged on the basis that a policy or practice has a disparate impact on a protected class must demonstrate that such a policy or practices is related to creditworthiness and is justified by a legitimate and necessary business objective. Certain factors that lenders may use in their decisions regarding ...
Report
SAVE Your Guesses: Borrower Expectations for Enrollment in the New SAVE Income-Driven Repayment Plan
As the end of the pandemic-era payment pause on federal student loans was announced, the U.S. Department of Education introduced measures to help ease borrowers back into repayment. One such measure included a change to the menu of repayment plans that are offered to borrowers to reduce their scheduled monthly payments. In this third report in our series on the student loan payments resumption, we consider borrower awareness of, intended enrollment in, and estimated payment reductions from the most recent and most generous income-driven repayment (IDR) plan yet: the Saving on a Valuable ...
Working Paper
Predicting College Closures and Financial Distress
In this paper, we assemble the most comprehensive dataset to date on the characteristics of colleges and universities, including dates of operation, institutional setting, student body, staff, and finance data from 2002 to 2023. We provide an extensive description of what is known and unknown about closed colleges compared with institutions that did not close. Using this data, we first develop a series of predictive models of financial distress, utilizing factors like operational revenue/expense patterns, sources of revenue, metrics of liquidity and leverage, enrollment/staff patterns, and ...
Report
Resetting Wallets: Survey Evidence on Household Budget Adjustments with Student Loan Payments Resumption
In this fourth report of our series on the federal student loan payments resumption that began on October 1, 2023, we examine how student loan borrowers expected to change their earning, borrowing, saving, and spending behaviors and their household budgets coinciding with the return to repayment. Borrowers began considering adjustments to their household budgets after the end of the payments pause was announced in early July 2023 and continued to do so through the summer. This occurred amid several developments: changing macroeconomic and policy environments, concurrent transitions in ...
Working Paper
Do student loan borrowers opportunistically default? Evidence from bankruptcy reform
Bankruptcy reform in 2005 eliminated debtors? ability to discharge private student loan debt in bankruptcy. This law aimed to reduce costly defaults by diminishing the perceived incentive of some private student loan borrowers to declare bankruptcy even if they had sufficient income to service their debt. Using a unique, nationally representative sample of anonymized credit bureau files, we examine the bankruptcy filing and delinquency rates of private student loan borrowers in response to the 2005 bankruptcy reform. We do not find evidence that the nondischargeability provision reduced the ...