A Demand Curve for Disaster Recovery Loans
利用联邦灾害恢复贷款项目的行政数据，通过24个自然实验估计了受灾家庭对贷款利率的需求弹性，发现利率上升1个百分点使贷款申请减少26%，并计算了每笔贷款平均2900美元的社会盈余。
We estimate and trace a credit demand curve for households that recently experienced damage to their homes from a natural disaster. Our administrative data include over one million applicants to a federal recovery loan program for households. We estimate extensive‐margin demand over a large range of interest rates. Our identification strategy exploits 24 natural experiments, leveraging exogenous, time‐based variation in the program's offered interest rate. Interest rates meaningfully affect consumer demand throughout the distribution of rates. On average, a 1 percentage point increase in the interest rate reduces loan take‐up by 26%. We find a large impact of applicants' credit quality on demand and evidence of monthly payment targeting. Using our estimated demand curve and information on program costs, we find that the program generates an average social surplus of $2900 per borrower.