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Cited by 507

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 20 of the 20 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

The Real Costs of Credit Access: Evidence from the Payday Lending Market*

Melzer, Brian T.·2011·The Quarterly Journal of Economics

Abstract

Using geographic differences in the availability of payday loans, I estimate the real effects of credit access among low-income households. Payday loans are small, high interest rate loans that constitute the marginal source of credit for many high risk borrowers. I find no evidence that payday loans alleviate economic hardship. To the contrary, loan access leads to increased difficulty paying mortgage, rent and utilities bills. The empirical design isolates variation in loan access that is uninfluenced by lenders' location decisions and state regulatory decisions, two factors that might otherwise correlate with economic hardship measures. Further analysis of differences in loan availability—over time and across income groups—rules out a number of alternative explanations for the estimated effects. Counter to the view that improving credit access facilitates important expenditures, the results suggest that for some low-income households the debt service burden imposed by borrowing inhibits their ability to pay important bills.

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Metadata

Authors
Melzer, B. T.
Venue
The Quarterly Journal of Economics
Published
2011-02
Volume
126
Issue
1
Pages
517-555
ISSN
  • 0033-5533 (ISSN-L)
  • 1531-4650
OpenAlex
W2150457745
Cited by
507
References
20
FWCI
93.81
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The Real Costs of Credit Access: Evidence from the Payday Lending Market*. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1093/qje/qjq009
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Melzer, B. T. (2011). The Real Costs of Credit Access: Evidence from the Payday Lending Market*. The Quarterly Journal of Economics. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjq009

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.