We examine the impact of house prices on labour supply decisions using UK micro data. We combine household survey data with local level house price measures and controls for local labour demand. Our micro data also allows us to control for individual level income expectations. We find...

This study examines the role of actual and perceived financial sophistication (i.e., financial literacy and confidence) for individuals' wealth accumulation. Using survey data from the German SAVE initiative, we find strong gender- and education-related differences in the distribution of the two...

Since the financial crisis financial literacy has attracted growing interest among researchers and policy makers, as there is international empirical evidence that financial literacy is poor among both adults and students. In Germany we have almost no empirical evidence on financial literacy,...

Direct financing of consumer credit by individual investors or non-bank institutions through an implementation of marketplace lending is a relatively new phenomenon in financial markets. The emergence of online platforms has made this type of financial intermediation widely available. This paper...

A recent US Treasury regulation allowed deferred longevity income annuities to be included in pension plan menus as a default payout solution, yet little research has investigated whether more people should convert some of the $15 trillion they hold in employer-based defined contribution plans...

This paper investigates retirees' optimal purchases of fixed and variable longevity income annuities using their defined contribution (DC) plan assets and given their expected Social Security benefits. As an alternative, we also evaluate using plan assets to boost Social Security benefits...

We analyze the performance of marketplace lending using loan cash flow data from the largest platform, Lending Club. We find substantial risk-adjusted performance of about 40 basis points per month for the entire loan portfolio. Other loan portfolios grouped by risk category have similar...

Using data from the US Health and Retirement Study, we study the causal effect of increased health insurance coverage through Medicare and the associated reduction in health-related background risk on financial risk-taking. Given the onset of Medicare at age 65, we identify our effect of...

Does economic policy uncertainty affect household stockholding? To answer this question we create a novel measure of household exposure to economic policy uncertainty news by combining survey information on the hours a household spends in reading newspapers and the frequency of such news in the...

We use a new panel dataset of credit card accounts to analyze how consumer responded to the 2001 Federal income tax rebates. We estimate the monthly response of credit card payments, spending, and debt, exploiting the unique, randomized timing of the rebate disbursement. We find that, on...