Collateral requirements play an important role in credit markets. This paper shows that the endowment effect--the phenomenon where owing a good increases one's valuation of it--inhibits demand for loans which use a borrower's existing assets as collateral. Using a field experiment in Kenya, we...

We study how financial development affects economic development and wage inequality. We use a large expansion of government-owned banks into Brazilian cities with low bank branch coverage and combine it with data on the universe of employees from 2000-2014. We find that higher financial...

Using friendship data from Facebook, we study the effects of three aspects of social capital on household financial behavior. We find that the most important measure of social capital in explaining stock market and saving participation is Economic Connectedness, defined as the fraction of one's...

We conduct a randomized controlled trial to understand how a web-based retirement saving calculator affects workers' retirement-savings decisions. In both conditions, the calculator projects workers' retirement income goal. In the treatment condition, it also projects retirement income based on...

We study the redistributive effects of inflation combining administrative bank data with an information provision experiment during an episode of historic inflation. On average, households are well-informed about prevailing inflation and are concerned about its impact on their wealth; yet, while...

I survey the advice given by the fifty most popular personal finance books and compare it to the prescriptions of normative academic economic models. Popular advice frequently departs from normative principles derived from economic theory, which should motivate new hypotheses about why...

This article provides a concise narrative overview of the rapidly growing empirical literature on financial literacy and financial education. We first discuss stylized facts on the demographic correlates of financial literacy. We next cover the evidence on the effects of financial literacy on...

Genetic factors play a major role in the development of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD). Observable genetic factors could impact household planning and medical care if they contain actionable information, meaning that they i) are associated with significant harms, ii) reflect...

For decades, households' subjective expectations elicited via surveys have been considered meaningless because they often differ substantially from the forecasts of professionals and ex-post realizations. In sharp contrast, the literature we review shows household characteristics and the ways in...

We conduct a survey-based experiment with 2,776 students at a non-profit university to analyze income insurance demand in education financing. We offered students a hypothetical choice: either a federal loan with income-driven repayment or an income-share agreement (ISA), with randomized framing...