Higher sales tax in the home country relative to a neighboring country creates a huge incentive for consumers who live closer to the border to purchase goods across the border. Using a unique panel dataset of consumer financial transactions, we find that, when facing higher domestic sales tax,...

Central to the field of consumer finance is that consumers make financial decisions that do not always coincide with the ideal financial decisions ideally depicted in optimal economic models [Campbell, 2006]. In this review, we discuss developments in the field of household finance,...

This paper examines relational contracts (RCs) in the housing market that exist between lenders and appraisers. We document that 42% of appraisals are at or near the contract value, while only 7.5% are below the contract. We develop an RC model and test several predictions using a novel data set...

This study employs an administrative dataset containing high-frequency transaction records for approximately four million smart transit cards used by Singaporean residents in order to study the travel preferences of public transport commuters. We examine the impact of service attributes,...

Working at home benefits workers with low fixed costs and the ability to engage in joint market and household production. We evaluate a large-scale reform in Singapore that allows the possibility of business creation at one's residential property and study whether the option of home-based...

This paper shows, for the first time, how liquidity infusions from government bailouts affect loan modification in the mortgage market. The design of the Pooling and Service Agreement leads mortgage servicers to prefer foreclosure to modification when the servicers are liquidity constrained....

Exploiting a novel panel dataset of consumer financial transactions in Singapore, we examine the consumption response to an anticipated, transitory price shock generated by the nation-wide annual sale event. Consistent with theory, we find inter-temporal substitution where consumers spend less...

This paper investigates the role of ethnic matching between buyers and sellers in housing markets. Using unique public housing datasets in Singapore, we find that sellers sell homes in blocks with a high concentration of their own (other) ethnic group at significant premiums (discounts). Chinese...

This paper examines the causal effects of air pollution on the household consumption of water and electricity in Singapore. Using the transboundary haze pollution caused by forest fires in Indonesia as an exogenous shock, we find that increases in haze pollutant intensity in the air...

This paper studies the effect of adding space to existing housing apartments on housing price and the probability that owners will sell their apartment (flat). This space adding is part of a large scale urban renewal and upgrading policy in Singapore, and is carried out only if sufficient...