Are Information Disclosures Effective? Evidence from the Credit Card Market

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Seira, Enrique; Elizondo, Alan; Laguna-Muggenburg, Eduardo
• 署名单位: Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico; Bank of Mexico; Stanford University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-ECONOMIC POLICY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7731
• DOI: 10.1257/pol.20140404
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 277-307
• 关键词: reform; truth

摘要

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.