The United States has a long history of promoting homeownership through the mortgage interest tax deduction, and home equity constitutes an important source of borrowing collateral. There is a sizable body of work studying how fluctuating house prices impact consumer behavior. Since college...

We document the characteristics of children and young adults identified in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics as having a learning disability and study whether legislative changes in diagnosis criteria have had a noticeable effect determining who receives a diagnosis. We further document that...

During the period from 1990 to 2002, U.S. households experienced a dramatic wealth cycle, induced by a 369-percent appreciation in the value of real per capita liquid stock-market assets, followed by a 55-percent decline. However, despite predictions at the time by some analysts relying on...

This paper tests whether heterogeneity of time preferences can explain individual credit behavior. In a field experiment targeting individuals from low-to-moderate income households, we measure individual time preferences through choice experiments, and then match these time preference measures...

Approximately half of credit card holders in the United States regularly carry unpaid credit card debt. These so-called "revolvers" exhibit payment behavior that differs from that of those who repay their entire credit card balance every month. Previous literature has focused on the adoption of...

Laboratory experiments are an important methodology in economics, especially in the field of behavioral economics. However, it is still debated to what extent results from laboratory experiments can be applied to field settings. One highly important question with respect to the external validity...