We provide novel evidence that peer induced saliency bias acts as a mechanism to explain consumption peer effects. This bias occurs when consumers overweight the influence of a single, salient peer when assessing brand quality, and underweight more objective, aggregate quality data. We exploit...

We provide the first cross-sectoral description of local consumption markets. Detailed credit card data show consumers have limited mobility and manage the spatial dimension of their transactions. In more frequently purchased sectors, expenditure declines faster with distance; further, the spatial...

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...

Every year many states offer sales tax holidays (STHs) temporarily exempting items like clothes, shoes and school supplies from the state sales tax. We use two data sets, the Diary portion of the Consumer Expenditure Survey and a unique data set of credit cards transactions, to investigate the...

In this paper, we employ a unique tax experiment and dataset in a highly salient tax rate environment to examine consumer response to complex and uncertain tax reforms. Tax reforms raise some fundamental questions in public finance: How does consumption respond to tax change? How is the tax...

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...