With more than $50 trillion in assets worldwide, investment funds run by the insurance industry and pension system are one of the most systemically important elements of the global financial system. In March 2014, following the global and euro area financial and economic crises, the European...

The paper builds up on the body of the international research of the issue of microcredit to outline the possible policy scenarios and business strategies for the Russian market.Russia has recently witnessed the rapid change of political and regulatory attitude towards the microcrediting. As...

We study the impact of loan-to-value regulation on supply and demand for unregulated debt that is used for home acquisition. In our setting, part of the dwelling price is in the form of pre-existing debt exempt from the regulation. Variations in the latter prior to the LTV regulation generated...

We develop a theoretical model to study the welfare effects of libertarian paternalism on information acquisition, social learning, and financial decision-making. Individuals in our model are permitted to appreciate and use the information content in the default options set by a social planner....

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is considering new regulation of payday lending and bank overdraft protection. The Dodd-Frank Act, which established the CFPB, recognizes that consumers benefit from competition among providers of consumer credit products. That law requires the...

Since a mysterious creator under the alias Satoshi Nakamoto (a pseudonym) launched first successful cryptocurrency in January 2009, he (or could be she) also opened the door for never-ending criticism, claims, arguments, plethora of articles, and media frenzy all contemplating what Bitcoin is....

Financial innovation in the form of new delivery channels, products, and providers has helped push out the frontier of access to finance and thus increase the bankable and banked population. Mobile money and crowdfunding platforms are prime examples for this. The same financial innovation has...

This study provides new evidence on the impact of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) on mortgage lending by taking advantage of an exogenous policy shock in 2014, which caused significant changes in neighborhoods' CRA eligibility in the Philadelphia market. The loss of CRA coverage leads to an...

The intersection of research and policy on consumer credit often has a Goldilocks feel. Some researchers and policymakers posit that consumer credit markets produce too much credit. Other researchers and policymakers posit that markets produce too little credit. I review theories and evidence on...

Borrowing decisions affect most households, with large stakes and implications for subfields as varied as macroeconomics and industrial organization. I review theoretical and empirical work on household debt: its prevalence, level, growth, and composition, as well as various measures of consumer...