Financial innovations have resulted in an explosion in the number of so-called structured products being offered in the retail marketplace. To explain the complex structure of these hybrid debt securities, their prospectuses frequently employ numerical examples to illustrate the investment's...

Payday lenders advance small, short-term consumer loans through convenient storefront shops with limited underwriting. However, their fees convert to very high annualized rates of interest (APR's 390%). Using proprietary, store-level data, we find that a store's age importantly affects its...

This paper documents a link between the real and financial sides of the economy. We find that retail equity mutual fund flows in Canada are negatively related to current and past changes in a component of the prime and 5-year mortgage rates that is uncorrelated with government rates. The effect...