Rationality in the Consumer Credit Market: Choosing between Alternative and Mainstream Credit

The chapter begins with an examination of debates around consumer protection and hire purchase in the 1930s. It explains the emergence and significance of the Hire Purchase Act, 1938. It explores radical (but thwarted) Labour plans to reshape important sectors of the consumer credit market during the 1940s. The chapter then explains the influence of Keynesian theory and its role in generating new policy on economic demand management. The Conservative election victory of 1951 owed much to the party’s courtship of voters with free market rhetoric, but this government instigated hire purchase controls to improve the balance of payments and combat inflation. Labour dubbed the measures ‘a very vicious piece of class legislation’. This policy created long-standing disagreement between the Treasury and the Board of Trade (and consumer durables manufacturers) about the damage to UK manufacturing. The chapter outlines developments up until the Radcliffe Committee was tasked to examine the issue.

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Gender Discrimination at the Consumer Credit Market in Chile: Experimental Evidence from a Correspondence Study with Real Borrowers

AEA Randomized Controlled Trials ◽

10.1257/rct.3961-2.0 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Raimundo Undurraga

Keyword(s):

Experimental Evidence ◽

Gender Discrimination ◽

Consumer Credit ◽

Credit Market ◽

Correspondence Study

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Gender Discrimination at the Consumer Credit Market in Chile: Experimental Evidence from a Correspondence Study with Real Borrowers

AEA Randomized Controlled Trials ◽

10.1257/rct.3961-1.0 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Raimundo Undurraga

Keyword(s):

Experimental Evidence ◽

Gender Discrimination ◽

Consumer Credit ◽

Credit Market ◽

Correspondence Study

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Signaling and Indeterminacy of Equilibria in Unsecured Credit and Insurance Markets

The B E Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy ◽

10.2202/1935-1682.2220 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 10 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Shreemoy Mishra

Keyword(s):

Interest Rates ◽

Lower Risk ◽

Market Failure ◽

Strategic Behavior ◽

Multiple Equilibria ◽

Consumer Credit ◽

Credit Market ◽

Insurance Markets ◽

Equilibrium Amount ◽

Credit Scores

Abstract I study strategic behavior under credit-based insurance.' It is assumed that higher consumer credit scores are associated with lower risk for insurable losses. Even when default is costless, some borrowers repay loans as a signal of low risk-type to insurers. There are multiple equilibria and equilibrium refinement techniques have no bite. The equilibrium amount of debt is indeterminate. For low credit scores, equilibrium involves randomization between default and repayment. This can explain the hockey-stick' shape of interest rates observed in several markets. Perfect information about consumer risk-type can lead to credit-market failure and lower welfare.

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Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Consumer Credit Market in V4 Countries

Risks ◽

10.3390/risks9120229 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 9 (12) ◽

pp. 229

Author(s):

Maria Czech ◽

Blandyna Puszer

Keyword(s):

Consumer Credit ◽

Credit Market ◽

Future Research ◽

Household Debt ◽

The Czech Republic ◽

Regression Methods ◽

Consumer Loans ◽

Household Decisions ◽

The Impact ◽

Visegrad Group

The aim of this article is to analyse and assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the consumer credit market in the countries of the Visegrad Group (V4, i.e., the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary). There is no doubt that the pandemic has determined the amount of household debt due to consumer credit in the V4 group, and thus the question arises of how the pandemic affects the propensity of households to take out loans and the propensity to lend to them, and therefore whether it affects both the behaviour of borrowers and lenders. The study used the time series and multiple linear regression methods. The results of the study show that the Covid-19 pandemic has determined the level of household debt in the V4 group and is not indifferent to household decisions regarding taking out consumer loans. Although the research is preliminary, it has contributed to some extent to a better understanding of household indebtedness at a time of turbulence and instability resulting from health factors in V4 countries. In the future, this research will serve as the basis for future research on the phenomenon of household indebtedness in other countries.

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