Much Ado About Nothing? New Evidence on the Effects of Payday Lending on Military Members

56 Pages Posted: 8 Jan 2020

See all articles by Bill Skimmyhorn

Bill Skimmyhorn

Mason School of Business, College of William & Mary; U.S. Army Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis

Susan Carter

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Date Written: 2017

Abstract

We evaluate the effect that payday loan access has on credit and labor market outcomes of individuals in the U.S. Army. Using the conditional random assignment of service members to different locations, we employ three identification strategies: cross-sectional variation in state policies, within-term variation in payday lending access, and a difference in- difference analysis using the national Military Lending Act. We find few adverse effects of payday loan access on service members when using any of these methods, even when we examine dozens of subsamples that explore potential differential treatment effects.

Keywords: payday lending, military lending act, household finance

JEL Classification: G2, D14, D12, G18

Suggested Citation

Skimmyhorn, William and Carter, Susan, Much Ado About Nothing? New Evidence on the Effects of Payday Lending on Military Members (2017). Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 99, No. 4, 2017, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3505440

William Skimmyhorn (Contact Author)

Mason School of Business, College of William & Mary ( email )

Williamsburg, VA
United States

HOME PAGE: http://https://mason.wm.edu/faculty/directory/full-time-faculty/skimmyhorn_w.php

U.S. Army Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis ( email )

West Point, NY
United States

Susan Carter

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
91
Abstract Views
717
Rank
429,256
PlumX Metrics