This policy brief examines the impact of student loan debt on individuals' homeownership status and wealth accumulation, employing a rich set of financial and demographic variables that are not available in many of the existing studies that use credit bureau data. It is important to understand...

It is commonly noted that in the history of the Money Market Mutual Fund (MMMF) industry only two MMMFs have “broken the buck,” or had the net asset value per share (NAV) at which they transact fall below $1. While this statement is true, it is useful to consider the role that...

The bursting of the housing price bubble during 2007 and 2008 was accompanied by high interbank spreads, and a partial breakdown of interbank lending. This paper theoretically models how Knightian uncertainty over banks risk exposures may have contributed to the breakdown. The paper shows: 1)...

This brief analysis of home-mortgage lending trends in New England is based on data collected under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA). HMDA provides information on mortgage lending trends and includes data by loan purpose, type of loan, income, and the race and ethnicity of borrowers. In...

We use a regression discontinuity design to investigate the effect of the Community Reinvestment Act on consumer credit outcomes using data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Consumer Credit Panel database (Equifax data) for the years 2004 to 2012. A bank’s activities in census...

The Federal Reserve Financial Services Strategic Plan for 2012–2016 specifies five main policy goals for the next few years. The second of its goals is to "Maintain public confidence in the end-to-end safety and security of clearing and settlement systems." Indeed, in each annual Survey of...

We explore several different explanations of the effect of foreclosures on neighboring properties using a dataset of transactions in Boston, for which we have rich data on the size and location of condominium associations. There is compelling evidence against a supply effect—nearby condo...

Recent legislation and court settlements in the United States allow merchants to use price discounts to steer customers to pay with means of payment that are less costly to merchants. This paper suggests one method of calculating merchants’ change in profit associated with giving price...

The effect of wealth on consumption is an issue of longstanding interest to economists. Analysts believe that fluctuations in household wealth have driven major swings in economic activity. This paper considers so-called wealth effects—the impact of changes in wealth on household consumption...

This paper uses panel data through 2011 to examine evidence of shifts in household balance sheet behavior following the financial crisis and Great Recession. The paper considers evidence of balance sheet repair through debt repayment as well as changes in the composition of households’ balance...