Are High-Interest Loans Predatory? It is often argued that people might take on too much high-cost debt because they are present focused and/or overoptimistic about how soon they will repay

Are High-Interest Loans Predatory? Theory and Evidence from Payday Lending. Hunt Allcott, Joshua J. Kim, Dmitry Taubinsky & Jonathan Zinman. NBER Working Paper 28799. May 2021. DOI 10.3386/w28799

Abstract: It is often argued that people might take on too much high-cost debt because they are present focused and/or overoptimistic about how soon they will repay. We measure borrowers' present focus and overoptimism using an experiment with a large payday lender. Although the most inexperienced quartile of borrowers underestimate their likelihood of future borrowing, the more experienced three quartiles predict correctly on average. This finding contrasts sharply with priors we elicited from 103 payday lending and behavioral economics experts, who believed that the average borrower would be highly overoptimistic about getting out of debt. Borrowers are willing to pay a significant premium for an experimental incentive to avoid future borrowing, which we show implies that they perceive themselves to be time inconsistent. We use borrowers' predicted behavior and valuation of the experimental incentive to estimate a model of present focus and naivete. We then use the model to study common payday lending regulations. In our model, banning payday loans reduces welfare relative to existing regulation, while limits on repeat borrowing might increase welfare by inducing faster repayment that is more consistent with long-run preferences.

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Critics argue that payday loans are predatory, trapping consumers in cycles of repeated high interest borrowing. A typical payday loan incurs $15 interest per $100 borrowed over two weeks, implying an annual percentage rate (APR) of 391 percent, and more than 80 percent of payday loans nationwide in 2011-2012 were reborrowed within 30 days (CFPB 2016). As a result of these concerns, 18 states now effectively ban payday lending (CFA 2019), and in 2017, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) finalized a set of nationwide regulations. The CFPB’s then director argued that \the CFPB’s new rule puts a stop to the payday debt traps that have plagued communities across the country. Too often, borrowers who need quick cash end up trapped in loans they can’t afford" (CFPB 2017).

Proponents argue that payday loans serve a critical need: people are willing to pay high interest rates because they very much need credit. For example, Knight (2017) wrote that the CFPB regulation \will significantly reduce consumers’ access to credit at the exact moments they need it most." Under new leadership, the CFPB rescinded part of its 2017 regulation on the grounds that it would reduce credit access.

At the core of this debate is the question of whether borrowers act in their own best interest. If borrowers successfully maximize their utility, then restricting choice reduces welfare. However, if borrowers have self-control problems ("present focus," in the language of Ericson and Laibson 2019), then they may borrow more to finance present consumption than they would like to in the long run. Furthermore, if borrowers are "naive" about their present focus, overoptimistic about their future financial situation, or for some other reason do not anticipate their high likelihood of repeat borrowing, they could underestimate the costs of repaying a loan. In this case, restricting credit access might make borrowers better off.

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We find that on average, people almost fully anticipate their high likelihood of repeat borrowing. The average borrower perceives a 70 percent probability of borrowing in the next eight weeks without the incentive, slightly lower than the Control group’s actual borrowing probability of 74 percent. Experience seems to matter. People who had taken out three or fewer loans from the Lender in the six months before the survey—approximately the bottom experience quartile in our sample—underestimate their future borrowing probability by 20 percentage points. By contrast, more experienced borrowers predict correctly on average