It is proof of barrier-stock decisions from the several-mortgage preparations
Yet the overall amount borrowed has also been large for the multiple financing preparations, illustrating you to definitely workers comprehend the multiple-mortgage coverage due to the fact an affirmation guaranteeing 401(k) credit at the ple, which have a multiple-mortgage plan leads to professionals credit increased fraction out-of advancing years riches than simply otherwise. Package rates of interest billed try adversely and you can significantly of credit amounts, although rates is quantitatively quick.
Fellow member attributes in addition to amount. Professionals decades thirty-five–forty-five borrowed the biggest small fraction of their money, for both the fresh new fund plus full, when you’re personnel ages forty five–55 was indeed the following large class. Amazingly, players decades 55–sixty, who will be exempt from one 10 percent penalty taxation whenever they independent out of solution, was basically quite more likely to borrow compared to the reference group, users less than many years twenty five. Yet not, pros sixty+ borrowed at low prices of all age range. This may be just like the instance employees are will able to make penalty-totally free distributions out of 401(k) savings when you find yourself operating, unrelated with the financing function. I along with see that high-paid and you can richer people borrowed larger portions of its bundle wide range, compared to the center/ lower-money and wide range communities. And that, if you are our before show revealed that lower income and lower money home was expected to borrow at the detailed margin, the higher money/money members lent proportionally even more, conditional on borrowing from 
the bank.
C. Endogeneity Evaluation
Up to now, i’ve assumed you to definitely companies build the bundle mortgage rules individually from worker consult. However, a possible alternative reason toward observed effectation of bundle loan enjoys towards participant borrowing from the bank will be you to package sponsors framework the firms’ loan rules responding to help you personnel exchangeability need. Which is, certain enterprises you will notice professionals that have a naturally highest interest in borrowing (due to lifecycle factors or behavioral biases), in which case they might render several financing keeps to attract particularly somebody. If so, the good correlation anywhere between new member borrowing therefore the quantity of plan fund welcome carry out mirror package sponsor expectation of employee borrowing from the bank means, as opposed to staff member reactions to help you manager plan framework preferences.
As we try not to entirely eliminate so it possibility, i have undertaken a couple of evaluation to possess endogeneity, on which we currently statement. Including, if the bundle sponsors performed put financing policy when you look at the anticipation regarding new member need, we may expect one to agreements and that acceptance numerous financing carry out differ systematically away from single-loan arrangements, along observable features. By comparison, when the differences in borrowing from the bank behavior were on account of players reacting individually in order to package loan formula, there has to be no systematic variations round the agreements. To evaluate this hypothesis, we focus on another regression:
The dependent variable takes the value of one if the plan allowed its participants to hold multiple loans, and 0 if it allowed only a single loan. The PLAN_CHARj vector consists of characteristics including the mean and standard deviation of participant age, tenure, household income, financial wealth, the plan loan interest rate, the number of participants in the plan, and controls for the firm’s industrial sector. Our hypothesis is that there should be no statistically significant difference in observable characteristics between plans allowing multiple loans and plans allowing only one loan. What we find is that only factor, the standard deviation of tenure, is occasionally significant (full results appear in Online Appendix Table 3), while no other factors are statistically significant. Accordingly, we conclude that sponsors do not structure plan loan policies to meet participant characteristics associated with borrowing needs. 22
Given that some other robustness try, i hypothesize that when preparations acceptance numerous funds on account of new member request, the fresh ratio away from members holding numerous loans in those preparations is always to getting relatively large. Alternatively, simply 13.8 % got a lot more fund when allowed to get it done; in other words, 86.dos % out-of eligible individuals got only a single mortgage, regardless if its arrangements allowed multiple fund. We do not take notice of the counterfactual fact having people inside the single-financing agreements; which is, we can’t assess the cousin need for even more money certainly users inside unmarried-mortgage arrangements. Yet , we could view this new interest in after that finance because of the sequential consumers for the single-mortgage arrangements. Sequential consumers are the ones which, in the solitary-financing plans, simply take you to definitely mortgage, pay it back, following bring a unique financing immediately. We find you to simply thirteen.9 % from participants was in fact sequential consumers during the unmarried-financing plans, a speeds virtually identical into thirteen.8 percent from multiple-financing takers for the preparations enabling more than one mortgage. This indicates you to definitely fellow member mortgage demand for multiple loans in the detailed margin is not considerably more across the arrangements, irrespective of whether it permit merely just one or numerous funds. It is to the extreme margin from numerous-loan mortgage demand, given that shown about small fraction out-of membership wide range borrowed, the two types of agreements disagree.