Payday Loan Take-Up Effects of Psychology-Guided Information Disclosure

Marianne Bertrand's dataset from a field experiment at a national payday lender chain studies the impact of psychology-guided information disclosure on borrowing. The research found that information designed to reduce narrow thinking about loan costs, particularly by reinforcing the adding-up effect of fees over pay cycles, reduced loan take-up by about 11% within a 4-month window. The data likely contains records from the experiment measuring borrower responses to different information treatments.

Use Cases

• Evaluating the causal effect of specific information treatments on high-cost debt use.
• Analyzing how framing financial costs over time influences borrower decision-making.
• Testing theories of narrow thinking and present bias in a field setting with payday loan customers.
• Benchmarking the efficacy of behavioral nudges against a control group in a financial context.

Strengths

• Data originates from a controlled field experiment at a national chain, providing real-world ecological validity.
• The study reports a specific, quantified effect: an approximate 11% reduction in loan take-up.
• The research design is grounded in psychology and behavioral economics theory, linking cognitive bias to financial outcomes.

Limitations

• The dataset is closed license, restricting access and reuse.
• Column names and the exact row count are not provided in the available metadata, limiting assessment of structure and scale.
• The temporal coverage of the data is unclear beyond the referenced 4-month effect window.

Provenance

Source

Marianne Bertrand, Center for Economic and Policy Research

Collection Method

Field experiment conducted at a national chain of payday lenders.

Time Range

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Freshness

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Geography

United States (inferred from context of a national payday lender chain)