American Economic Journal:
Economic Policy
ISSN 1945-7731 (Print) | ISSN 1945-774X (Online)
Are Information Disclosures Effective? Evidence from the Credit Card Market
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy
vol. 9,
no. 1, February 2017
(pp. 277–307)
(Complimentary)
Abstract
Consumer protection in financial markets in the form of information disclosure is high on government agendas, even though there is little evidence of its effectiveness. We implement a randomized control trial in the credit card market for a large population of indebted cardholders and measure the impact of Truth-in-Lending-Act-type disclosures, de-biasing warning messages and social comparison information on default, indebtedness, account closings, and credit scores. We conduct extensive external validity exercises in several banks, with different disclosures, and with actual policy mandates. We find that providing salient interest rate disclosures had no effects, while comparisons and de-biasing messages had only modest effects at best.Citation
Seira, Enrique, Alan Elizondo, and Eduardo Laguna-Müggenburg. 2017. "Are Information Disclosures Effective? Evidence from the Credit Card Market." American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 9 (1): 277–307. DOI: 10.1257/pol.20140404Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D14 Household Saving; Personal Finance
- D83 Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
- G21 Banks; Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
- G28 Financial Institutions and Services: Government Policy and Regulation
- O16 Economic Development: Financial Markets; Saving and Capital Investment; Corporate Finance and Governance
There are no comments for this article.
Login to Comment