This study investigates the rationale for issuing complex securities to retail investors. We focus on a large market of investment products targeted exclusively at households: retail structured products in Europe. We develop an economic measure of product complexity in this market via a text...

In this paper, we present two stylized models of the financial system. We make the case that in order to realize the potential of a well-functioning complete financial market, financial system designers and financial service providers will need to think about ways to deliver financial...

This paper contributes the on-going debate on income inequality in advanced economies with a proposal aimed at reducing costly investment mistakes that are prevalent among middle-class households. The paper starts by describing how households should invest, compares it with what we know about...

In the context of emission trading it seems to be taken as given that people's preferences can be ignored with respect to the whole process of fixing emission targets and allocating emission permits to polluters. With this paper we want to reopen the debate on how citizens can be involved in...

Assuming a risk-neutral bank and assuming household utility to be exponential, we show how under information symmetry the covariance of income and loan repayments may explain higher household borrowings than in the case without default option. Under ex post information asymmetry and positive...

At the request of the Minister for Climate and Energy, Paul Magnette, who is also responsible for Consumer Affairs, the NBB's Microeconomic Analysis Service conducted an investigation into the link between payment arrears for mobile telephony and arrears on loan repayments. In this inquiry,...

In this paper, we present two stylized models of the financial system. We make the case that in order to realize the potential of a well-functioning complete financial market, financial system designers and financial service providers will need to think about ways to deliver financial...

Using ARIS/REDS data set for 2006 for rural India this paper models household vulnerability as expected utility and its components. We conclude, first, that between the years 1999 and 2006 household vulnerability is most explained by poverty and idiosyncratic components. Second, for risk coping...

We specify and estimate a lifecycle model of consumption, housing demand and labor supply in an environment where individuals may file for bankruptcy or default on their mortgage. Uncertainty in the model is driven by house price shocks, education specific productivity shocks, and catastrophic...

This paper studies how credit markets respond to policy constraints on household leverage. Exploiting a sharp policy-induced discontinuity in the cost of originating certain high-leverage mortgages, we study how the Dodd-Frank "Ability-to-Repay'" rule affected the price and availability of...