Search Results
Working Paper
Foreclosure Kids: Examining the Early Adult Credit Usage of Adolescents Affected by Foreclosure
We investigate the long-term effects of foreclosure-induced relocations on adolescents and their subsequent use of credit. We ask whether individuals who experience a foreclosure-induced move between the ages of 10 and 17 are more likely to exhibit signs of credit scarring later in life. To establish a set of counterfactual outcomes, we implement propensity score matching with exact matching on certain characteristics and regression adjustment of the remaining covariate imbalances. We then compare the credit behavior of individuals who experienced a foreclosure-induced move in adolescence to ...
Discussion Paper
Deconstructing Mechanic’s Liens
In this paper, we examine a new data set composed of mechanic’s lien complaints filed in the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia County). Over a 10-year period, 426 mechanic’s liens were filed against 398 single-family properties, which is less than 0.1 percent of single-family properties in Philadelphia. The lien properties in our data set tend to be more expensive, newer, and larger than non-lien properties. About 80 percent of mechanic’s liens are filed by general contractors, with the remainder pursued by a subcontractor. Notably, a 2014 change in Pennsylvania law ...
Discussion Paper
Combining AI and Established Methods for Historical Document Analysis
This paper examines methodological approaches for extracting structured data from large-scale historical document archives, comparing “hyperspecialized” versus “adaptive modular” strategies. Using 56 years of Philadelphia property deeds as a case study, we show the benefits of the adaptive modular approach leveraging optical character recognition (OCR), full-text search, and frontier large language models (LLMs) to identify deeds containing specific restrictive use language— achieving 98% precision and 90–98% recall. Our adaptive modular methodology enables analysis of ...
Discussion Paper
Moving into the Mainstream: Who Graduates from Secured Credit Card Programs?
Secured credit cards--credit cards whose limit is fully or partially collateralized by a bank deposit--are considered a gateway product to mainstream credit access. As consumers demonstrate good usage and repayment behavior, they may be offered the opportunity to graduate to an unsecured credit card. This paper uses anonymized account-level data to examine the prevalence of account graduation in the secured credit card market since 2012. Using a fixed effects regression model, we identify a set of usage and repayment behaviors that are correlated with account graduation.
Discussion Paper
Quantifying Cyber Risk in the Financial Services Industry
The Consumer Finance Institute hosted a workshop in February 2017 featuring James Fox, partner and principal at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and a leading authority on cybersecurity in the financial services industry. He discussed the importance of measuring cyber risk, highlighted some challenges that financial institutions face in measuring cyber risk, and assessed several leading cyber-risk management methodologies. Fox also provided some recommendations for bank exams and insights into how federal agencies might begin to quantify systemic cyber risk. This paper summarizes Fox?s ...
Working Paper
One Threshold Doesn’t Fit All: Tailoring Machine Learning Predictions of Consumer Default for Lower-Income Areas
Modeling advances create credit scores that predict default better overall, but raise concerns about their effect on protected groups. Focusing on low- and moderate-income (LMI) areas, we use an approach from the Fairness in Machine Learning literature — fairness constraints via group-specific prediction thresholds — and show that gaps in true positive rates (% of non-defaulters identified by the model as such) can be significantly reduced if separate thresholds can be chosen for non-LMI and LMI tracts. However, the reduction isn’t free as more defaulters are classified as good risks, ...
Report
Secured Card Market Update
For more than 40 years, secured credit cards have enabled borrowers with limited or damaged credit histories to obtain credit, often with many of the benefits of traditional, unsecured credit cards. Despite the recent development of alternative credit-building products, the secured card has not been left behind and, in fact, continues to be a focal point of fintech innovation and new product offerings. In this special report, we update previous research by the Consumer Finance Institute on secured cards using data from the country’s largest financial institutions. As of September 2023, ...
Report
How Has the COVID-19 Pandemic Affected the Supply of Consumer Credit?
For credit card companies and other lenders, the pandemic has created a variety of risks and challenges. This report examines how credit card lenders have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Report
Aging, Cognition, and Financial Health: Building a Robust System for Older Americans
This paper summarizes a November 2017 conference cosponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia?s Consumer Finance Institute and the University of Pennsylvania?s Penn Memory Center and Healthy Brain Research Center. As cognitive abilities decline, older adults may make poor financial judgments and become vulnerable to exploitation and fraud. The potential damage to individual finances as well as to the nation?s financial system will increase as the baby boom generation ages into retirement. The goal of the conference was to discuss actions that members of the financial services ...