A number of studies have pointed to various mistakes that consumers might make in their consumption-saving and financial decisions. We utilize a unique market experiment conducted by a large U.S. bank to assess how systematic and costly such mistakes are in practice. The bank offered consumers a...

We examine the ability of policymakers to stimulate household borrowing and spending during the Great Recession by reducing banks¡¯ cost of funds. Using panel data on 8.5 million U.S. credit card accounts and 743 credit limit regression discontinuities, we estimate the marginal propensity to...

The main rationale for policy intervention in debt renegotiation is to enhance such activity when foreclosures are perceived to be inefficiently high. We examine the ability of the government to influence debt renegotiation by empirically evaluating the effects of the 2009 Home Affordable...

Refinancing a mortgage is often one of the biggest and most important financial decisions that people make. Borrowers need to choose the interest rate differential at which to refinance and, when that differential is reached, they need to take the steps to refinance before rates change again....

In this paper we use a large panel of individuals from Consumer Credit Panel dataset to study the timing of homeownership as a function of credit constraints and expectations of future house price. Our panel data allows us to track individuals over time and we model the transition probability of...

Purpose: This paper reviews recent advances in the empirical literature of FinTech and household finance. Design/methodology/approach: We survey the effects of FinTech on three different aspects of household finance: payments, lending and portfolio decisions. Specifically, we examine the impact...

For most people, buying a home is their single largest financial commitment. Previous research shows that Chinese buyers pay less for homes with unlucky addresses and more for homes with lucky addresses. Using Singapore data on housing transactions combined with a plethora of individual buyer...