Before discussing our methodology, we motivate our study with a table illustrating bank adaptation and soft credit at work. The data are from a large Greek bank, covering tens of thousands applications by individuals for credit products. 4 Columns 1 and 2 show the monthly declared income and monthly payments on household credit products for self-employed individuals across di§erent industries, and column 3 presents the ratio of payments-to-income. On average, self-employed Greeks spend 82% of their monthly reported income servicing debt. To put this number in perspective, the standard practice in consumer Önance (in the United States as well as Greece) is to never lend to borrowers such.
