Research shows that Black, Latinx, and other minorities pay more for credit and banking services, and that wealth accumulation differs starkly between their households and white households. The link between debt inequality and the wealth gap, however, remains less thoroughly explored,...

We analyze competition in the consumer lending segment between banks and financial technology (or “fintech”) companies (or “fintechs”) as well as giant technology (or “bigtech”) companies (or “bigtechs”) providing alternative credit. We use a database combining banklevel...

This chapter provides new evidence on borrowers' hidden information about their riskiness and its link to their impatience. To do so, I analyze consumer loans on the German platform Smava, which has a unique peer-to-peer lending process. Observationally identical but unobservably riskier...

This study examines key default determinants of fintech loans, using loan-level data from the LendingClub consumer platform during 2007–2018. We identify a robust set of contractual loan characteristics, borrower characteristics, and macroeconomic variables that are important in determining...

There has been a great deal of interest recently in understanding the potential role of fintech firms in expanding credit access to the underbanked and credit-constrained consumers. We explore the supply side of fintech credit, focusing on unsecured personal loans and mortgage loans. We...

We characterize the large number of mortgage offers for which people qualify in the United Kingdom. Very few pick the cheapest option, nonetheless the one selected is not usually noticeably more expensive. A few borrowers make very expensive choices. These are most common when the menu they face...