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The rapid growth of credit card use in China poses the potential for card overuse and the accumulation of increased debt. The purpose of this paper is to report on an investigation into the determinants of overall credit card spending and card-financed debt by Chinese consumers.

This study focusses on two dependent variables: credit card monthly spending and card debt. The spending measure is based on consumer outlay for the month preceding the survey. Card debt is the consumers’ outstanding credit card debt when the survey was conducted. Three groups of independent measures are used: socio-demographic characteristics, card features and consumer attitude towards money. Both card spending and card debt are estimated with OLS methods. Data was obtained from the 2013 China Household Finance Survey of 1,920 households in 29 provinces and 262 counties across China that used credit cards over the survey period.

The empirical findings suggest consumers’ attitude towards money is more important in explaining card spending and debt variation than socio-demographic characteristics and card features. The credit limit set for a card, obligations to other loans and the method of paying for ordinary shopping exhibit positive effects on both card spending and card debt, while age exhibits a negative effect. Further, card spending is positively correlated with card debts, but the factors that determine card spending do not necessarily affect card debt and vice versa. Minimum card debt payments, cash advances, card tenure and interest-bearing debt have no effect on card spending but have positive effects on card debt. In addition, gender and income have opposite effects on card spending and debt.

The relationships we have documented suggest several actions the Chinese Government could consider dealing with credit card debt risk. Controlling the aggressive promotional campaigns that card issuers use to attract consumers and aggressive credit policies should be a focus of attention. The Chinese Government might, for example, impose minimum age and income requirements for granting credit cards and prohibit issuance of new cards to applicants who are already in debt with other types of credit. In addition, more stringent criteria to curb increases in card limits and tighter control over cash advances made on cards should be applied. Minimum payment amounts can also be increased in order to reduce credit card debt risk.

Despite ample documentation of consumers’ credit card behaviour, the literature is deficient in at least two areas of enquiry. First, most previous research has investigated either credit card spending behaviour or card debt, but not both. Second, with few exceptions, most research has investigated a range of specific factors that affect credit card use. In contrast, this study investigates card spending as well as card debt behaviour using a wide variety of consumer dimensions particularly relevant to credit card use and resulting debt. In addition, this study focusses on Chinese consumers, who traditionally prefer to save first and delay spending. The impact of the rapid growth of credit card use on this traditional Chinese orientation towards spending is dynamic. Documenting the influence of the individual factors examined in this study is likely to be of value to both policy makers and institutions that offer and manage credit in this changing environment.

Covid-19 sparked new interest in consumer financial resilience (CFR) amongst regulatory authorities, financial institutions, policymakers and the academia. No financial and health crisis has been worse than Covid-19, erasing the growth momentum of nations at all development stages. This study measures consumers' current financial resilience and future expectations within India's emerging market and its likely response to policy measures.

CFR is investigated using individual household data on economic state, employment, income and savings from the Reserve Bank of India's consumer confidence survey. The empirical approach is based on the temporal time-series data with mixed frequency regression. Consumers' current and future expectation indices appear as the regressand, whereas credit-deposit ratio, credit outstanding, number of bank accounts and digital transactions act as main regressors.

The response of consumers' current situation is 3.50 times higher than that of their future expectations. This implies that a rise in the credit-deposit ratio and credit line positively affects CFR. In contrast, a higher number of bank accounts, a proxy for financial inclusion, adversely affect consumer's well-being possibly owing to the government's failure to provide financial support through banking networks. Digital payments (value) positively affect consumers' current situation and future expectations.

The results of this study inform policy formulation for enhancing financial resilience. Consumer sentiment index acts as a proxy for CFR.

Financial resilience is a concern for policymakers. This study is one of the first studies linking CFR with financial inclusion, credit creation and digital financial capability.

Conventional wisdom predicts that changes in macroeconomic conditions significantly affect income inequality. In this paper, we hypothesize that the way in which macroeconomic conditions affect inequality depends on how these conditions influence the constituents of total inequality: inequality of opportunity (IO) and inequality of effort (IE). Using the PSID database for the United States (1970–2009), we first decompose total inequality into these components. Then, we specify a dynamic model that relates each inequality component to a set of macroeconomic factors. Apart from real GDP and inflation rates, the most widely used factors in the literature, we also consider outstanding consumer credits and public welfare and health care expenditures. We find that real GDP and outstanding credits have a negative and significant effect upon IO and IE, while inflation has a positive and significant effect only on IE, and welfare expenditures have a negative and significant effect only on IO.

Credit cards are in the news again. In 1986 there was a rise of 14% in the amount of outstanding consumer credit, more than three times the rise in prices and double the rise in earning. Credit advanced in March 1987 was at a record level of £3.2bn. And retailer credit cards are doing excellent business. This feature looks at the background to the credit card explosion and then examines, in detail, the latest recruit to the fold, the Co‐op VISA card. We also take a look at the Connect card story, and conclude with a summary of the RMDP survey on retailers' attitudes to EFTPoS.

Using data from the Survey of Consumers, this study focuses on consumer’s resolution efforts with credit card problems and the likelihood of “exiting” – that is, discontinuing the use of a given credit card or of the financial institution associated with the card. Among all households with a problem, nearly two‐thirds (63 percent) were able to resolve their problem, while over half (55 percent) exited. Exit was associated with marital status, race, how dissatisfied the consumer was, number of problems related to credit cards, and attribution. Holding all else constant, consumers who were likely to resolve their problem were only half as likely to exit. Thus, credit card companies need to carefully and quickly address their customers’ problems and resolve their complaints.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of the 2007-2009 uncertainty shocks on policymakers’ behavior.

Uncertainty shocks in the US credit, financial and production markets are represented by extraordinary events. As in Bloom (2009), these events are associated with significant economic and political shocks (e.g. Lehman Brothers’ collapse). Credit markets uncertainty shocks, which played a crucial role in the aftermath of the house prices collapse in the USA, are first analyzed in a bivariate VAR context, and then, embodied in a simple theoretical framework.

The empirical evidence suggests that the US credit, financial and production markets have been affected by a relative large number of uncertainty shocks (i.e. rare events). In a Brainard’s (1967) uncertainty scenario, it is shown that a bizarre money-liquidity relationship exacerbates the “policymakers’ cautiousness-aggressiveness trade-off.” In addition, the model suggests that a “double” dose of policy, in presence of a global credit crunch, might be useless.

This paper improves the existing literature in two main directions. First, it provides novel empirical evidence on the unusual dynamics of the US credit market and its effects on the real economic activity during the crisis. Second, in a very simple theoretical framework accounting for parameter uncertainty, it addresses whether a bizarre money-credit relationship affects policymakers’ behavior (i.e. cautiousness vs aggressiveness).

Traditionally, loan officers use different credit scoring models to complement judgmental methods to classify consumer loan applications. This study explores the use of decision trees, AdaBoost, and support vector machines (SVMs) to identify potential bad loans. Our results show that AdaBoost does provide an improvement over simple decision trees as well as SVM models in predicting good credit clients and bad credit clients. To cross-validate our results, we use k-fold classification methodology.

Retail Bankers must redefine their business if they are to compete profitably against non‐bank financial institutions (NBFI) in the consumer market. Banks have hitherto been slow to respond to change and to include NBFI as competitors, recognising only tardily that consumers are becoming more financially sophisticated, that deregulation is moving traditional barriers and technology changing the face of competition. Although NBFI have taken the lead in the consumer fianancial services marketplace, the race has only just begun, and in ten years' time some of the banks represented in today's market will have established strong and profitable positions, due to the development of market‐driven strategies and consumer marketing techniques.

Reference materials in the area of money and banking have ordinarily been lumped under the category of general reference books in economics and business. This is understandable because most of the required data can be obtained from books dealing with the latter. There are, however, numerous government and private sources which deal exclusively with banking and monetary statistics. This, coupled with their highly specialized character, justifies a separate treatment. We may being by examining a few directories, among which, Moody's Bank and Finance Manual is one of the better known and most widely used. Its coverage extends to banks, insurance and real estate companies, real estate investment trusts and miscellaneous financial enterprises. The section on banks gives the latest available accounts of nearly 3000 banks, with the history of the institution from the date of the charter, absorptions, capital history, dividend payments and price ranges. More than 3000 smaller banks are listed with essential details. The manual includes information on the chartered banks of Canada, the principal banks of England, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and South America. The insurance section covers all phases of insurance business, like underwriting and investment, assets and liabilities, gains and losses, and types of business written. Federal credit regulatory agencies such as the Federal Reserve System, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal National Mortgage Association, Federal Home Loan Bank Board and others are treated in considerable detail. As with the other Moody's manuals, the center section contains composite banking and monetary data such as a ten‐year range of banking stocks and bonds and lists of 300 largest banks, 100 largest mutual savings banks, 100 largest life insurance companies and 100 largest savings and loan associations. Also included are stock averages and distribution of assets and investments of insurance companies.

Contemporary American economists are almost universally proud of their contribution to the enhancement of human welfare. They will readily and honestly dismiss the once famous nickname of economics, the dismal science. However, despite the fact that the United States economic growth in the past has been impressive, the individual actor in the economic world appears to remain a dismal creature. “Dismal” not in the Malthusian sense of population trap, but in the sense that the actor never seems to be satisfied with what he has — even though what he has has greatly increased. In other words, economic man did collectively generate the wealth of the nation, but the increased wealth does not seem to have led the majority of people individually to a more satisfying life. In the meantime, economists have begun to focus on Democracy in Deficit, The Economy in Deficit, and America's Great Consumption Binge.