Financial sophistication does not uniformly impact home ownership decisions. Sophisticated households are less likely to pay too high a mortgage rate and more likely to refinance when financially advantageous to do so but more likely to over pay for a house and less likely to default when...

We show that consumers spend 15% more per day on their credit cards in the ten days following the receipt of a credit card statement than in the days prior to the statement. We test several mechanisms for this effect including mental accounting, optimization of the free float, and liquidity...

We propose a new approach to studying the pass-through of credit expansion policies that focuses on frictions, such as asymmetric information, that arise in the interaction between banks and borrowers. We decompose the effect of changes in banks' cost of funds on aggregate borrowing into the...

Using a large, representative sample of credit and debit card transactions in Singapore, this paper studies the consumption response of individuals whose same-building neighbors experienced personal bankruptcy. The unique bankruptcy rules in Singapore suggest liquidity shocks drive personal...

Using a large, representative sample of high-frequency credit card transactions in the United States, this paper examines the causal effect of sunshine-induced mood on contemporaneous household credit card spending. We document a 0.3 percent increase in credit card spending in response to a...