This paper summarizes the proceedings of the second Consumer Behavior and Payment Choice conference, held at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston on July 2527, 2006. These conferences are unique in featuring the collaboration of two groups of payments experts the private-sector payments industry...

This article is centred around the notions of shareholder value orientation and financialisation. Shareholder value orientation is reflected by a high dividend payout ratio applied by firms and the reluctance of firms to finance physical investment via new equity issues. Financialisation is the...

We examine the effects of collateralized borrowing in a realistically parameterized life-cycle portfolio choice problem. We provide basic intuition in a two-period model and then solve a multi-period model computationally. Our analysis provides insights into life-cycle portfolio choice relevant...

We study the joint impact of gender and marital status on financial decisions. First, we test the hypothesis that marriage represents - in a portfolio framework - a sort of safe asset, and that this effect is stronger for women. Controlling for a number of observable characteristics, we show...

This paper provides a joint analysis of household stockholding participation, stock location among stockholding modes, and participation spillovers, using data from the US Survey of Consumer Finances. Our multivariate choice model matches observed participation rates, conditional and...

This paper examines a canonical stochastic overlapping generations model with dynamically complete markets. Belief differences lead agents to place bets against each other and so wealth shifts across agents and across generations. Such changes in the wealth distribution strongly affect prices of...

We propose a simple and powerful method for determining the transition process in continuous-time DSGE models under Poisson uncertainty numerically. The idea is to transform the system of stochastic differential equations into a system of functional differential equations of the retarded type....

This paper analyses the default option typical to American mortgages. Households borrow to buy durable housing, but future house prices are uncertain, and households find it dvantageous to default on their debt if house prices fall sufficiently. A key assumption of the model is that households...

We analytically show that a common across rich/poor individuals Stone-Geary utility function with subsistence consumption in the context of a simple two-asset portfolio-choice model is capable of qualitatively and quantitatively explaining: (i) the higher saving rates of the rich, (ii) the...