Existing studies of household stock trading using administrative data offer conflicting results: discount brokerage accounts exhibit excessive trading, while retirement accounts show inactivity. This paper uses population-wide data from PSID and SCF to examine the overall extent of household...

Most US credit card holders revolve high-interest debt, often combined with substantial (i) asset accumulation by retirement, and (ii) low-rate liquid assets. Hyperbolic discounting can resolve the former but not the latter puzzle (Laibson et al., 2003). This paper combines, updates, and extends...

We use data from several waves of the Survey of Consumer Finances to document credit and debit card ownership and use across US demographic groups. We then present recent theoretical and empirical contributions to the study of credit and debit card behavior. Utilization rates of credit lines and...

Most US credit card holders revolve high-interest debt, often combined with substantial (i) asset accumulation by retirement, and (ii) low-rate liquid assets. Hyperbolic discounting offers a way to resolve the former puzzle (Laibson et al., 2003). Bertaut and Haliassos (2002) sketched an...

Recent market developments raise doubts regarding further spread of household stock market participation. We study, computationally and econometrically, net gains from access to stocks, and estimate the potentially changing role of their determinants across the distribution of such gains for US...

We discuss the current state of stockownership among households in major European countries (France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK), drawing parallels and contrasts with the US experience. We use detailed microeconomic datasets and explore the extent to which observed...

Household-level portfolio data show a tendency of the majority of households in each country to hold no stocks despite a historical expected-return premium on equity relative to riskless assets. This paper first explains why such a tendency constitutes a puzzle in economic theory (the...

Equity culture has spread among households on both sides of the Atlantic. We analyze the likely changes in behavior of households that enter the stock market in response to arrival of information about how to invest in stocks. Without borrowing constraints, the improved prospects arising from...

This paper presents an overview of the main findings of an international project on Household Portfolios coordinated by the authors. Contributions to the project deal with the state of the art in analytical, computational, and econometric methods of analysis of household portfolio choice,...

This paper discusses calibration and numerical solution of a wide range of household portfolio models. We illustrate the main conceptual, technical, and computational issues that arise in the context of household portfolio choice, and explore the implications of alternative modeling choices. We...