Debit cards are overtaking credit cards as the most prevalent form of electronic payment at the point of sale, yet the determinants of a ubiquitous consumer choice - "debit or credit?" - have received relatively little scrutiny. Several stylized facts suggest that debit-card use is driven by...

Remarks at the Quarterly Regional Economic Press Briefing, New York City.

Remarks at the New York Association for Business Economics, New York City.

Remarks at the Household Debt and Credit Press Briefing, New York City.

In response to tight money, both consumer loans and consumption fall. In this paper, I ask whether there is any causality running from loans to consumption by focusing on hw the composition of automobile finance between bank and nonbank sources of credit changes in response to unanticipated...

Using a unique loan level data set that links individual household credit ratings with property and loan characteristics, we test the extent to which homeowners' equity and credit ratings affect the likelihood that mortgage loans will be refinanced as interest rates fall. The logit model...

Subprime mortgage lending expanded in New York City between 2004 and mid-2007, and delinquencies on these subprime loans have been rising sharply. We use a rich, loan-level data set of the city's outstanding subprime loans as of January 2009 to describe the main features of this lending and to...

Thousands of U.S. households filed for bankruptcy just before the bankruptcy law changed in 2005. That rush-to-file was more pronounced, we find, in states with more generous bankruptcy exemptions and lower credit scores. We take that finding as evidence that the new law effectively reduces...