The way that consumers make payments is changing rapidly and attracts important current policy interest. This paper develops and estimates a structural model of adoption and use of payment instruments by U.S. consumers. We use a cross-section of data from the Survey of Consumer Payment Choice, a...

We exploit scanner data to track payment choice for grocery purchases for a large panel of households over three years. We show that households focus most of their expenditures on one or at most two of these instruments in choosing between using cash, a check, or a card, and they very rarely...

Using data from a nationally representative survey on consumer payment behavior, we estimate Heckman two-stage regressions on the adoption and use of seven different payment instruments. We find that the characteristics of payments are important in determining consumer payment behavior, even...

We present a vision for improving household financial surveys by integrating responses from questionnaires more completely with financial statements and combining them with payments data from diaries. Integrated household financial accounts - balance sheet, income statement, and statement of...

This paper reviews recent research on mortgage default, focusing on the relationship of this research to the recent foreclosure crisis. Research on defaults was advanced both theoretically and empirically by the time the crisis began, but economists have moved the frontier further by improving...

A simple model of time allocation between work and price-search predicts that consumers spend relatively more time searching for better prices for goods of which they consume relatively more. Using scanner data, we confirm empirically that consumers pay lower (higher) prices for goods that they...

Consumer protection in financial markets in the form of information disclosure is high on governments agendas, despite the fact that the empirical evidence on its effectiveness is scarce. To measure the impact of Truth-in-Lending-Act-type disclosures on default and indebtedness, as well as of...

During the 2000s, recurrent food price shocks due to volatility in international markets and extreme weather events affected consumption and nutritional patterns of Mexican urban households. This research quantifies the impacts of food price shocks on the purchase of nutrients and on the weight...

Prior research has found that job loss, as proxied for by regional unemployment rates, is a weak predictor of mortgage default. In contrast, using micro data from the PSID, this paper finds that job loss and adverse financial shocks are important determinants of mortgage default. Households with...

We measure consumers' readiness to face emergency expenses. Based on data from a representative survey of US consumers, we find that financial readiness varies widely across consumers, with lowest-income, least-educated, unemployed, and black consumers most likely to have $0 saved for emergency...