A "payday loan" is a short-term loan made for seven to 30 days for a small amount. Fees charged on payday loans generally range from $15 to $30 on each $100 advanced. A typical example would be that in exchange for a $300 advance until the next payday, the borrower writes a post-dated check for $300 and receives $255 in cash -- the lender taking a $45 fee off the top. The lender then holds on to the check until the following payday, before depositing it in its own account. When the fee for a short-term payday loan is translated into an annual percentage rate, the implied annual interest rate ranges between 400 and 1000 percent. Virtually no payday loan outlets existed 15 years ago; today, there are more payday loan and check cashing stores nationwide than there are McDonald's, Burger King, Sears, J.C. Penney, and Target stores combined. For economists, several interesting issues arise in the study of payday loans: Is this just a situation in which willing customers and firms interact in the market for ready access to high-cost, short-term credit? Or does the payday loan industry encourage habitual borrowing and the snowballing of unaffordable debt in such a way that the state has a role to play in limiting consumers from their own excesses? Would a ban or overly restrictive regulations on payday lending just revive the market for loan-sharking? And what of a similar practice by mainstream banks, who regularly allow their customers to overdraw their checking accounts if they pay a fee comparable in size to a payday loan charge?

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Supporters of subsidized home-ownership programs have made claims concerning the benefits of home ownership. Home owners are said to be more involved in social and political affairs, including neighboring and participation in community organizations. The authors test these claims using longitudinal data collected on groups of low-income home buyers and low-income renters in Baltimore. The results indicate that home buyers are less likely to neighbor and are more likely to participate in neighborhood and block associations but not other community organizations. Home buyers who perceived more neighborhood problems or who emphasized economic reasons for buying were no more likely to participate in social and political affairs.

The tremendous growth in the demand for very small, short-term loans by creditconstrained households is being largely filled by companies offering payday loans. This article explores the explosive growth of payday lending as a source of short-term consumer credit in low-and moderate-income communities, with a special emphasis on the relationship between industry business practices and the high incidence of perpetual indebtedness in which an increasing number of payday borrowers find themselves. Empirical analysis confirms two related truths about payday lending. First, there is no denying the large and growing demand for this consumer credit and the rapidly expanding network of companies willing to supply it. Second, despite its expanding customer base and notwithstanding industry denials, the financial performance of the payday loan industry, at least in North Carolina, is significantly enhanced by the successful conversion of more and more occasional users into chronic borrowers.

There are growing concerns about the way predatory mortgages erode housing equity. We examine another potential impact: the relationship between abusive loan terms and foreclosure. Do predatory characteristics increase the likelihood of foreclosure once other risk factors are taken into account? We use a national database of subprime refinance first-lien loans originated in 1999 to analyze this question.Even after we control for other factors, refinance loans with prepayment penalties are 20 percent more likely and those with balloon payments are 50 percent more likely to experience a foreclosure than other loans. These findings suggest that predatory loans have the potential not only to erode household wealth, but also to heighten negative effects on individuals, households, and communities. Excluding losses to borrowers, we estimate that prepayment penalties and balloon payment requirements in 1999 refinance originations increased national foreclosure-related losses to lenders and investors by about $465 and $127 million, respectively.