We study credit card rewards as an ideal laboratory to quantify redistribution between consumers in retail financial markets. Comparing cards with and without rewards, we find that, regardless of income, sophisticated individuals profit from reward credit cards at the expense of naive consumers....

We analyze the impact of monetary policy on consumer spending using credit card data. Because of their high frequency, these data improve identification and allow for a precise characterization of the transmission lags. We find that shocks to short-term interest rates affect spending much more...

The COVID-19 pandemic has been an unprecedented shock to economic activity with abrupt and unexpected changes in household consumption behavior. This paper investigates how the spread of the pandemic and government interventions have affected consumer spending using daily card transaction data...

Korean household debt has reached 148 percent of disposable income, high by emerging market standards. Most of this debt remains at variable rates, shifting the interest rate risk from better diversified financial institutions to households and increasing their sensitivity to macroeconomic...

Intro -- Contents -- I. INTRODUCTION -- II. HAVE SAVING RATES REALLY FALLEN? -- III. LIKELY IMPACT OF FINANCIAL INNOVATION AND LIBERALIZATION ON HOME EQUITY WITHDRAWAL ( HEW) AND SAVING -- IV. TRENDS IN HEWAND HOUSEHOLD SAVING ACROSS COUNTRIES -- V. HOW DOES HEW AFFECT HOUSEHOLD SAVING? -- VI....

We explore the role of sectoral debt dynamics in shaping business cycles in a sample of 52 Emerging Market Economies (EMEs) and Frontier Market Economies (FMEs) from 2005 to 2021. Higher household debt levels and growth are associated with significantly slower GDP growth in more developed EMEs...

We analyze the effects of borrower-based macroprudential tools in Finland. To evaluate the efficiency of the tools, we construct a heterogeneous agent model in which households endogenously determine their housing size and liquid asset levels under two types of borrowing constraints: (i) a...

The European debt crisis in the early to mid 2010s brought to the fore the issue of household debt distress: in the countries affected, widespread over-indebdtedness resulted in serious financial and social challenges. The crisis was primarily a mortgage debt crisis, but in several cases, the...

Although Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has experienced rapid growth in credit to households in recent years, most individuals are still credit constrained. This paper analyzes the determinants of household credit demand and credit constraints in BiH. To our knowledge, it is the first study on...

This paper evaluates the role of trade and financial linkages in the decision to enter a monetary union. We estimate a two-country DSGE model for the U.K. economy and the euro area, and use the model to compute the welfare trade-offs from joining the euro. We evaluate two alternative scenarios....