Fig. 3

Group (A): monthly effect—PD = 6 months and BT fee >$0. (a) BT balance transfer, PD promotional duration, CCC credit card company and CCC balance is the debt of RBS bank. EFX stands for Equifax and EFX balance is the aggregate debt of consumers recorded in Equifax bureau. PB balance stands for protected balance, which is the debt with high interest rates calculated by RBS bank. (b) These figures show the marginal effect β ₀ along with their corresponding 95% CIs (the upper and lower lines), implied by results in first section of Table 6 (in dollars). There are five dependent variables (payments, spending, \(\Delta {\text{CCC}}\;{\text{bal}}.\), \(\Delta {\text{EFX}}\;{\text{bal}}.\) and \(\Delta {\text{PB}}\;{\text{bal}}.\)) where bal. balance. ∆ represents a difference. Since CCC bal., EFX bal., and PB bal. are stock variables, their changes representing a level of balances in every month, and they are used as the dependent variables. (c) These figures indicate monthly trends of effect changes for five dependent variables by BT offer during 8 months. Consumers borrow less, and the effect becomes stronger in the following months with the increasing FFL. As for PR, the \(\Delta {\text{CCC}}\;{\text{bal}}.\) initially declines and then increases significantly to their positive levels after the PD. Therefore, customers try to pay off the debt during month 5, before the end of 6-month PD. The BT offer does not significantly impact consumers’ aggregate debt levels. Therefore, consumers do not use the check to consume but to pay off existing debt that carries a higher interest rate