Regulatory proposals for protecting consumers in the mortgage markets typically focus on making sure dangerous products are eliminated and consumers make informed product-choice decisions. These are intended to address consumers' product-choice mistakes. But there is another class of mistakes...

Credit card companies charge an interchange fee for each transaction, and almost half of this fee is returned to consumers in the form of a reward or perk program. Among credit card users who do not use cards for borrowing (convenience users), rewards are a means to negotiate the implicit price...

Consumers are more likely to keep a repayment promise they make themselves. When a scheduling conflict prevents a borrower from attending a mortgage closing, a Power of Attorney (POA) empowers a third party to promise that the borrower will repay the loan. On a matched sample of POA and non-POA...

The recent crisis and turbulences have significantly changed the consumers’ behavior, especially through its access possibility and satisfaction, but also the new dynamic flexible adjustment of the supply of goods and services. The access possibility and consumer satisfaction should be...

This paper is concerned with the tension between consumer persuasion and freedom of choice. We study how assertive language (as in the slogan Just do it!) affects consumer compliance in hedonic vs. utilitarian contexts. Previous literature consistently claimed that forceful language would cause...

We study the bancarization of marginal borrowers using credit cards and document that this process is difficult: default risk is substantial, returns heterogeneous, and account closings common. We also take advantage of a randomized control trial that varied interest rates and minimum payments...

Moderne Marktordnungen schützen den Verbraucher vor Schäden und sichern den Leistungswettbewerb und die Funktionsfähigkeit von Märkten. Wettbewerbsorientierte Verbraucherpolitik und verbraucherorientierte Wettbewerbspolitik ergänzen sich dabei. Die Verhaltensökonomik zeigt allerdings, dass...