pre- and post-intervention credit history of all borrowers in our sample that are covered by the Indian credit bureau.<sup>15</sup>

# **3.4.1 Administrative data**

In preparation for the experiment, the lender shared administrative data on customer demographics, loan characteristics, as well as data on prior borrowing and repayment from the lender’s data and credit bureau information at the time of loan application, for all customers in the sample frame.

We first obtained information on borrower and loan characteristics as well as the full repayment records of all borrowers in the sample from the lender. We aggregate these data to monthly frequency, corresponding to the monthly repayment cycles and construct a dummy variable indicating whether a borrower has made their loan payment by the required due date. The lender additionally shared data on the origination and end date of each loan, from which we construct an indicator variable for loans that are repaid in full and on time.

In a second step, we merged the loan and repayment data with the complete credit history of all borrowers that had a record in the Indian credit bureau. The credit bureau data was accessed after the experiment had concluded and includes the borrower’s credit score at the time of loan origination as well as a monthly record of all loans and loan payments for each borrower. Each monthly record includes the amount of the loan, the type of the loan, the date the loan was disbursed, and the dayspast-due of payments on each loan for the last 36 months. We use the credit bureau data to construct indicators of monthly loan repayment and delinquency across the credit market.

Table 1 reports summary statistics at baseline and tests of randomization balance for all contacted customers that are part of our estimation sample. Table 1, column (1), shows summary statistics for all contacted customers. The average customer in our sample is male, 33 years old, has an income of Rs 40,000 (US$ 528), and a loan of Rs 11,810 Rs (US$162) with a monthly payment of Rs 1,450 (US$ 21) outstanding. On average, borrowers in the sample had taken out 0.38 prior loans recorded in credit bureau data. However, a substantial fraction of borrowers (67 percent) has no credit record. The credit scores of borrowers for whom a record was available are relatively high at 731 out of 800. Table 1 columns (2) to (5) report summary statistics for the same baseline borrower and loan characteristics for each treatment condition separately, and Table 1, column (6) reports a test of equality of means across treatment groups, which confirms that the randomization was successful.

# **3.4.2 Measurement of repayment outcomes and borrower beliefs**

The main outcomes of interest in the debt forbearance experiment are loan repayment, as observed in the lender’s administrative data and credit bureau records for all borrowers in the sample, and beliefs about credit enforcement the likelihood of future forbearance. In this section, we describe the measurement of each of these outcomes in turn.

> 15 The Indian credit bureau, TransUnion CIBIL, was founded in 2000 and currently covers approximately 63 percent of adults in India (World Bank, 2022). Consumer credit scores in India range from 300 to 900, with scores between 700-749 labeled ‘good’ and scores above 750 labeled ‘excellent’.

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