This paper studies why investors buy dividend-paying assets and how they time their consumption accordingly. We combine administrative bank data linking customers' consumption transactions and income to detailed portfolio data and survey responses on financial behavior. We find that private...

Does mental accounting matter for total consumption expenditures? We exploit a unique setting in which individuals exogenously received a new credit card, without requesting one. Using random variation in the time of receipt we show that individuals temporarily increase total consumption...

We study how one person may shape the way another person interprets objective information. They do this by proposing a sense-making explanation (or narrative). Using a theory-driven experiment, we investigate the mechanics of such narrative persuasion. Our results reveal several insights. First,...

We study how one person may shape the way another person interprets objective information. They do this by proposing a sense-making explanation (or narrative). Using a theory-driven experiment, we investigate the mechanics of such narrative persuasion. Our results reveal several insights. First,...

This paper explores whether and why the pandemic differentially altered women and men's consumption behavior. After the 2020 wave of lockdown restrictions were lifted, women reduced consumption more than men. Data on self-reported reasons for consuming less reveals that gender differences in...

Consumers seek restitution for disputed financial services by filing complaints with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). We find that filings from low-socioeconomic (i.e., low-income and African American) zip codes were 30% less likely to be resolved with the consumer receiving...

Banking services can now be delivered digitally and many banks are downsizing their physical operations. Bank customers are also relying less on physical locations because of digital banking. Is geography indeed now less important for banks? Using quasi-exogenous closures of ATMs in a densely...

Innovations in financial technology have expanded individuals' access to unsecured personal loans. Building on insights from consumer behavior research that link negative emotions to credit-financed consumption, we show that transitory emotion influences households' use of online loans....

This study shows that individuals' habits in grocery shopping are incrementally useful in predicting their credit card payment behaviors and that such incremental predictive power can translate into incremental profits for firms. Guided by prior work, we identify five broad grocery shopping...

Research in consumer psychology is essential for developing a deep understanding of how consumers make financial decisions as well as for creating solutions to improve this process. Fortunately, there has been substantial growth in research in this area among consumer behavior scholars in recent...