The Coholding Puzzle: New Evidence from Transaction-Level Data

• 成果类型: Article; Early Access
• 署名作者: Gathergood, John; Olafsson, Arna
• 署名单位: University of Nottingham; Danish Finance Institute; Copenhagen Business School; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF FINANCIAL STUDIES
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0893-9454
• DOI: 10.1093/rfs/hhae016
• 发表日期: 2024
• 关键词: CARD DEBT PUZZLE; financial literacy; tax salience; credit; liquidity

摘要

Why do individuals pay debt interest when they could use their savings to pay down the debt? We explore why individuals cohold debt and savings using detailed and highly disaggregated daily-level data on household finances. We find that coholding mostly occurs in short spells within the month and the level of coholding is typically modest. Periods of coholding are not associated with shocks at the individual level. We show that mental accounting has a role to play in explaining coholding, in particular how individuals allocate different categories of expenditure to accounts in credit and debit.