Approximately half of credit card holders in the United States regularly carry unpaid credit card debt. These so-called quot;revolversquot; exhibit payment behavior that differs from that of those who repay their entire credit card balance every month. Previous literature has focused on the...

To assess whether homeowners know their house values and mortgage terms, we compare the distributions of these variables in the household-reported 2001 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) to the distributions in lender-reported data. We also examine the share of SCF respondents who report not...

This paper considers the interaction between the microeconomic decisions facing households and the macroeconomic environment in a setting where households have 'real-world' mortgage contracts. In particular, we consider the possible consequences of the important changes in the framework for...

Household indebtedness has risen sharply in recent years, with large increases in both secured and unsecured borrowing. In this paper, waves 5 and 10 of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) for 1995 and 2000 are used to examine the determinants of participation in the unsecured debt market...

Focusing on observable default risk's role in loan terms and the subsequent consequences for household behavior, this paper shows that lenders increasingly used risk-based pricing of interest rates in consumer loan markets during the mid-1990s. It tests three resulting predictions. First, the...

This paper provides the first joint analysis of household stockholding participation, location among stockholding modes, and participation spillovers. Our model matches observed participation, conditional and unconditional, and asset location patterns. We find that financial sophistication...

Social status concerns effect investors' decisions by driving a wedge in attitudes towards aggregate and idiosyncratic risks. I model such concerns by emphasizing the desire to quot;get ahead of the Joneses,quot; which implies that investors' aversion to idiosyncratic risk is lower than their...

This paper analyzes the changes in wealth inequality between college graduates and high-school graduates. The college/high-school net worth gap first narrows from 1989 to 1995 but then increases to the 1989 level thereafter. The wealth gap and income gap seem closely related, as some stylized...

This paper reviews the impact of aging on private pensions, in particular on the payout phase, assesses the part that annuities can play in financing retirement, and examines the role of financial markets in facilitating the allocation on assets accumulated in defined contribution pension plans....

This paper focuses on describing the international practice on the various forms of retirement benefit payment currently allowed in countries throughout the world and the regulatory environment surrounding these different forms of benefit payment. The analysis suggests considerable variance...