Publications

July 2022
Article

The Pass-Through of Uncertainty Shocks to Households

By: Marco Di Maggio, Amir Kermani, Rodney Ramcharan, Vincent Yao and Edison Yu

Using new employer-employee matched data, this paper investigates the impact of uncertainty, as measured by idiosyncratic stock market volatility, on individual outcomes. We find that firms provide at best partial insurance to their workers. An increase in firm-level... View Details

Keywords: Employment Risk; Consumption; Employment; Risk and Uncertainty; System Shocks; Insurance; Household; Spending

May 2022
Article

Can Gambling Increase Savings? Empirical Evidence on Prize-Linked Savings Accounts

By: Shawn A. Cole, Benjamin Iverson and Peter Tufano

This paper studies the adoption and impact of prize-linked savings (PLS) accounts, which offer lottery-like payouts to individual account holders in lieu of interest. Using microlevel data from a bank in South Africa, we show that PLS is attractive to a broad group of... View Details

Keywords: Household Finance; Banking; Savings; Prize-linked Savings; Lottery; Household; Personal Finance; Saving; Banks and Banking

Purchase

September 2019
Article

Household Matters: Revisiting the Returns to Capital Among Female Microentrepreneurs

By: Arielle Bernhardt, Erica Field, Rohini Pande and Natalia Rigol

Multiple field experiments report positive financial returns to capital shocks for male and not female microentrepreneurs. But these analyses overlook the fact that female entrepreneurs often reside with male entrepreneurs. Using data from experiments in India, Sri... View Details

Keywords: Capital Return; Entrepreneurship; Gender; Household; Capital

16 May 2017
News

Household Debt Is Higher Than It Was In 2008 — But Don't Panic

Research Summary

Overview

By: Peter Tufano

Tufano’s research has focused on financial innovation and financial engineering—and for more than two decades, household finance. While he continues to study these topics, his current primary research is on the role of business in addressing climate change. With... View Details

April 2025
Article

The Impact of Minority Representation at Mortgage Lenders

By: W. Scott Frame, Ruidi Huang, Erica Jiang, Yeonjoon Lee, Will Liu, Erik J. Mayer and Adi Sunderam

We study links between the labor market for loan officers and access to mortgage credit. Using novel data matching the (near) universe of mortgage applications to loan officers, we find that minorities are significantly underrepresented among loan officers. Minority... View Details

Keywords: Household Finance; Demographic Economics; Financial Institutions; Diversity; Prejudice and Bias; Mortgages; Personal Finance

The U.S. financial services industry grew from 4.9% of GDP in 1980 to 7.9% of GDP in 2007. A sizeable portion of the growth can be explained by rising asset management fees, which in turn were driven by increases in the valuation of tradable assets, particularly... View Details

2022
Working Paper

Buy Now, Pay Later Credit: User Characteristics and Effects on Spending Patterns

By: Marco Di Maggio, Justin Katz and Emily Williams

Firms offering "buy now, pay later" (BNPL) point-of-sale installment loans with minimal underwriting and low interest have captured a growing fraction of the market for short-term unsecured consumer credit. We provide a detailed look into the US BNPL market by... View Details

Keywords: Household Finance; Fintech; Consumer Credit; Credit; Consumer Behavior

27 Jan 2011
Working Paper Summaries

A Brief Postwar History of US Consumer Finance

Keywords: by Andrea Ryan, Gunnar Trumbull & Peter Tufano; Banking

13 Nov 2017
Research & Ideas

Want to Be Happier? Spend Some Money on Avoiding Household Chores

makes us happier. To begin their study, the researchers asked more than 6,000 people in North America and Europe, who earned a variety of incomes, whether they spent money on time-saving services. On both continents, those who outsourced their way out of cooking,... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

March 2012
Article

How to Make Finance Work

By: Robin Greenwood and David S. Scharfstein

Once a sleepy old boys' club, the U.S. financial sector is now a dynamic and growing business that attracts the best and the brightest. It is tempting to declare the industry a roaring success. But its purpose is to serve the needs of U.S. households and firms, and by... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Value; Competitive Advantage; Investment; Performance Evaluation; Household; Financial Crisis; Finance; Financial Services Industry; United States

Purchase

2025
Working Paper

How Do Households Suppress the Price of Tail Risk?

By: Laurent Calvet, Claire Célérier, Gordon Liao and Boris Vallée

This paper investigates the effects of the issuance of retail products with non-linear payoffs on option prices. For a given underlying asset, when the outstanding volume of products embedding a short-put position increases, implied volatility at the corresponding... View Details

Keywords: Security Design; Dividend; Options; Structured Products; Market Segmentation; Financial Instruments; Design; Volatility; Markets; Segmentation

Web

Behavioral Finance & Financial Stability

Financial Sector More Info The Impact of Pensions and Insurance on Global Yield Curves By: Robin Greenwood & Annette Vissing-Jorgensen JUN 2018 In this NBER working paper, researchers from the Behavioral Finance and Financial Stability... View Details

30 Jan 2008
Working Paper Summaries

Cost of External Finance and Selection into Entrepreneurship

Keywords: by Ramana Nanda

2010
Working Paper

A Brief Postwar History of U.S. Consumer Finance

By: Andrea Ryan, Gunnar Trumbull and Peter Tufano

This article describes the consumer finance sector in the US since World War II. We first define the sector in terms of the functions delivered by firms (payments, savings/investing, borrowing, managing risk, and providing advice.) We provide time series evidence on... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Borrowing and Debt; Mortgages; Personal Finance; Business History; Innovation and Invention; Risk and Uncertainty; Financial Services Industry; United States

February 2021
Article

Do Household Wealth Shocks Affect Productivity? Evidence from Innovative Workers During the Great Recession

By: S. Bernstein, T. McQuade and R. Townsend

We investigate how the deterioration of household balance sheets affects worker productivity, and, in turn, economic downturns. Specifically, we compare the output of innovative workers who experienced differential declines in housing wealth during the financial crisis... View Details

Keywords: Great Recession; Household; Financial Condition; System Shocks; Employees; Performance Productivity