Brian T. Melzer

Positive Externalities of Social Insurance: Unemployment Insurance and Consumer Credit

This paper studies the impact of unemployment insurance (UI) on the housing market. Exploiting heterogeneity in UI generosity across U.S. states and over time, we find that UI helps the unemployed avoid mortgage default. We estimate that UI expansions during the Great Recession prevented more than 1.3 million foreclosures and insulated home values from labor market shocks. The results suggest that policies that make mortgages more affordable can reduce foreclosures even when borrowers are severely underwater. An optimal UI policy during housing downturns would weigh, among other benefits and costs, the deadweight losses avoided from preventing mortgage defaults.This paper studies the impact of unemployment insurance (UI) on consumer credit markets. Exploiting heterogeneity in UI generosity across U.S. states and over time, we find that UI helps the unemployed avoid defaulting on their mortgage debt. We estimate that UI expansions during the Great Recession prevented about 1.4 million foreclosures. Lenders respond to this decline in default risk by expanding credit access and reducing interest rates for low-income households at risk of being laid off. Our findings call attention to two benefits of unemployment insurance not previously highlighted: reducing deadweight losses from loan default and expanding access to credit.

Spillovers from Costly Credit

Recent research on the effects of credit access among low- and moderate-income households finds that high-cost payday loans exacerbate, rather than alleviate, financial distress for a subset of borrowers (Melzer 2011; Skiba and Tobacman 2011). In this study I find that others, outside the borrowing household, bear a portion of these costs too: households with payday loan access are 20% more likely to use food assistance benefits and 10% less likely to make child support payments required of non-resident parents. These findings suggest that as borrowers accommodate interest and principal payments on payday loan debt, they prioritize loan payments over other liabilities like child support payments and they turn to transfer programs like food stamps to supplement the household’s resources. To establish this finding, the analysis uses a measure of payday loan access that is robust to the concern that lender location decisions and state policies governing payday lending are endogenous relative to household financial condition. The analysis also confirms that the effect is absent in the mid-1990s, prior to the spread of payday lending, and that the effect grows over time, in parallel with the growth of payday lending.

Competition and Adverse Selection in the Small-Dollar Loan Market: Overdraft versus Payday Credit

We find that competition from payday lenders leads depository institutions to raise overdraft fees and reduce the availability of “free” checking accounts. We attribute this rise in prices partly to adverse selection created by banks’ practice of charging a flat fee regardless of the overdraft amount — pricing that favors depositors prone to large overdrafts. Payday credit is priced per dollar borrowed, so when that option is available, depositors prone to small overdrafts switch. That selection works against banks; large overdrafts cost more to supply and, if depositors default, banks lose more, so prices rise. Consistent with this adverse selection hypothesis, we document that the average dollar amount per returned check at banks and other depository institutions increases when depositors have access to payday credit. Our findings illuminate competition and pricing frictions in the large, yet largely unstudied, small-dollar loan market.

Loan Contracting in the Presence of Usury Limits: Evidence from Automobile Lending

We study the eects of usury limits on the market for auto loans and nd little evidence of credit rationing. We show instead that loan contracting and the organization of the loan market adjust to facilitate loans to risky borrowers. When usury restrictions bind, auto dealers nance their customers’ purchases and raise the vehicle sales price (and loan amount) relative to the value of the underlying collateral. By doing so, they arrange loans with similar monthly payments and compensate for credit risk through the mark-up on the product sale rather than the loan interest rate.

Non-Cognitive Abilities and Financial Delinquency: The Role of Self-Efficacy in Avoiding Financial Distress

We investigate a novel determinant of household financial delinquency, namely, people’s subjective expectations regarding the cost-benefit trade-off in default decisions. These expectations are determined by individuals’ self-efficacy, which is a non-cognitive ability that measures how strongly people believe that their effort will influence future outcomes. Using longitudinal household survey data, we show that people with higher self-efficacy, measured earlier in life, are less likely to be financially delinquent later on and to face consequences such as losing assets or access to traditional credit markets, are more likely to prepare for dealing with potential adverse shocks such as a job loss or a health event, and when faced with such shocks, are less likely to become financially delinquent. Complementing prior findings regarding the effects of cognitive abilities, financial literacy and education on economic behavior, our evidence suggests that non-cognitive abilities have an important role in household financial decision making.

Accelerator or Brake? Cash for Clunkers, Household Liquidity, and Aggregate Demand

We evaluate the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) by comparing the vehicle purchases and disposals of households with eligible “clunkers” to those of households with similar, but ineligible, vehicles. We find that CARS caused roughly 500,000 purchases during the program period and that the liquidity provided by CARS was critical for generating this large response. CARS provided less liquidity for households owning clunkers securing loans, since participation required loan repayment. The participation rate of these households was low, which we attribute to liquidity constraints and distinguish from the effects of other indebtedness, household income, and the size of the program subsidy.