In 2009, the Federal Reserve Board implemented a survey of families that participated in the 2007 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) to gain detailed information on the effects of the recent recession on all types of households. Using data from the 2007-09 SCF panel, we highlight the variation in...

Making inferences about aggregate business cycles from regional variation alone is difficult because of economic channels and shocks that differ between regional and aggregate economies. However, we argue that regional business cycles contain valuable information that can help discipline models...

We study how the recent national housing boom and bust affected college enrollment and attainment during the 2000s. We exploit cross-city variation in local housing booms, and use a variety of data sources and empirical methods, including models that use plausibly exogenous variation in housing...

We use data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), covering both the recent recession and the pre-recessionary period, to explore how foregone market work hours are allocated to other activities over the business cycle. Given the short time series, it is hard to distinguish business cycle...

The ability of consumers to make informed financial decisions improves their ability to develop sound personal finance. This paper uses a panel dataset from Russia, an economy in which consumer loans grew at an astounding rate - from about US$10 billion in 2003 to over US$170 billion in 2008 -...

As the world becomes more financially integrated and complex, average individuals and their families are increasingly faced with making highly sophisticated and all-too-often irreversible financial decisions. Nowhere is this more evident than with regard to retirement decision-making. Indeed,...