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Restrictions On Credit: A Public Policy Analysis Of Payday Lending, Petru Stoianovici

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Using state level data between 1990 and 2006, I find no empirical evidence that payday lending leads to more bankruptcy filings, which casts some doubt on the debt trap argument against payday lending. I capture the intensity of the payday lending activity in a state by the number of payday lending stores.
I control for restrictions on payday lenders by including into the analysis six variables that I construct that rank legislative provisions across states and across time.