Overindebted private households have created economic and political concern. Using measures of relative (over-) indebtedness which relate household income and debt services to different concepts of subsistence levels, this paper investigates whether severe household indebtedness is driven by...

This paper analyzes differences in self-assessed debt burdens of German households confronted with an objective debt burden. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, my econometric analysis shows that a household's subjective debt burden is not only influenced by the current...

Since 2002 the German government seeks to stimulate private retirement savings by means of special allowances and tax exemptions - the so-called Riester scheme. We apply matching and panel regression techniques to assess the impact of the Riester scheme on households' propensities to save in a...

We analyze the effect of household indebtedness on different health outcomes using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel from 1999–2009. To establish a causal effect, we rely on (a) fixed-effects methods, (b) a subsample of constantly employed individuals, and (c) lagged debt variables to...

Hypothetical bias is the discrepancy between stated preferences and actual choices. As such, it is one of the key issues regarding the use of hypothetical survey methods and therefore highly relevant for economists in understanding human behavior and refining policy interventions. Hypothetical...

Credit default is a dramatic consequence of disadvantageous private financial decisions. Using regression methods which eliminate spatial autocorrelation at the level of 1 km² grids and further identification problems, we observe considerable and reinforcing residential segregation between...

We study borrowers’ preferences over bank and family loans based on field work undertaken in rural Rwanda. We randomly assigned willingness-to-pay questions for a hypothetical loan offer either by a bank or by a family member to a sample of 480 households. Informal family loans are typically...

The current study examines the way people deal with financial decisions. The purpose of this study is to explore the role of financial consulting in the decision making process and the complex decision dynamics in the run up to a decision. Data for this study were collected through a series of...

Six randomized control trials were published simultaneously in one issue of the “American Economic Journal: Applied Economics” in 2015. The studies show no or minimal impact from providing microloans to clients and have led many researchers and policy makers to conclude that microfinance has...

We use recently published long-run microdata (SCF+) to investigate generational wealth dynamics in the U.S. over the last seven decades. We document that the median wealth of people born in the first half of the 20th century increased from one ten-year birth cohort to the next. For people born...