In a randomized field experiment, I test if the way in which information is presented influences consumer behavior. Users of an online account aggregation app received a personalized index representing their net worth as a lifetime monthly cash flow. The presentation of the index varied in the...

This paper utilizes high-quality transaction data from the largest bank in Denmark to study what drives the demand for high-cost consumption loans. I investigate the extent to which adverse events drive loan demand, or if it is more likely to be explained by borrowers' personality traits. I find...

Using panel data on individual borrowing characteristics and neighborhood income, we assess the impact of relative income on indebtedness and payment delinquencies. We find that a worsening in relative income vis-à-vis similarly aged neighbors leads to higher indebtedness, primarily due to...

This paper studies why investors buy dividend-paying assets and how they time their consumption accordingly. We combine administrative bank data linking customers' consumption transactions and income to detailed portfolio data and survey responses on financial behavior. We find that private...

We study the effect of within-household mortality on the evolution of household per capita consumption. Relying on a panel survey of Mexican households, we find that these households were capable of perfectly smoothing the shock into their consumption caused by the death of a household member....

The economic wellbeing of the millennial generation, which entered its working-age years around the time of the 2007-09 recession, has received considerable attention from economists and the popular press. This chapter compares the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of millennials...

We show that prior lifetime experiences can "scar" consumers. Consumers who have lived through times of high unemployment exhibit persistent pessimism about their future financial situation and spend significantly less, controlling for the standard life-cycle consumption factors, even though...

This paper studies how and why households adjust their spending, saving, and borrowing in response to transitory income shocks. We leverage new large-scale survey data to first quantitatively assess households' intertemporal marginal propensities to consume (MPCs) and deleverage (MPDs) (the...