Payday loans are used by millions of Americans every year despite their annualized interest rates of several hundred percent. We provide new evidence on the consequences of payday borrowing and the determinants of personal bankruptcy. Using an administrative panel data set of loan records in a regression-discontinuity design, we estimate that payday loans increase personal bankruptcy rates by a factor of two. We assess possible mechanisms and find the most support for a novel one: payday loan access appears to induce bankruptcy filings by worsening the cash flow position of the household.

中文翻译：

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发薪日贷款会导致破产吗？

尽管他们的年化利率为数百％，但每年仍有数以百万计的美国人使用发薪日贷款。我们提供有关发薪日借贷后果和个人破产决定因素的新证据。使用回归-间断设计中的贷款记录管理面板数据集，我们估计发薪日贷款使个人破产率增加了两倍。我们评估了可能的机制，并找到了对一种新颖机制的最大支持：发薪日贷款的获取似乎通过使家庭的现金流状况恶化而引发了破产申请。