Credit Card Redlining

Ethan Cohen-Cole, a financial economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, has published a working paper titled 'Credit Card Redlining' that 'evaluates the presence of racial disparities in the issuance of consumer credit. Using a unique and proprietary database of credit histories from a major credit bureau, this paper links location-based information on race with individual credit files. After controlling for the influence of such other place-specific factors as crime, housing vacancy rates, and general population demographics, the paper finds qualitatively large differences in the amount of credit offered to similarly qualified applicants living in Black versus White areas."' In a commentary about Cohen-Cole's paper on the Credit Slips blog, Adam Levitin writes 'what this all speaks to is the need for greater transparency in the credit card industry, including the collection of more publicly available data.'