{"paper":{"title":"Effort-Centric Fairness in Lending Decisions","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["q-fin.GN","q-fin.RM","stat.CO"],"primary_cat":"q-fin.ST","authors_text":"Jake Ansell, Shiqi Fang, Zexun Chen","submitted_at":"2026-07-30T21:19:36Z","abstract_excerpt":"Algorithmic credit scoring must satisfy fairness and explanation requirements, yet prevailing predictive-parity criteria assess only outcomes at the decision point. They can therefore overlook whether rejected applicants face unequal burdens in reaching future approval, a phenomenon we call masked inequality. We develop an effort-centric framework that measures an applicant's effort as the minimum weighted cost of feasible changes required to cross the approval boundary. The framework distinguishes feature-independent actions from additive structural shifts that propagate through a causal mode"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2607.28847","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2607.28847/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}