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  • 05 May 2022
  • Research & Ideas

Why Companies Raise Their Prices: Because They Can

Döpper and Joel Stiebale in Rising Markups and the Role of Consumer Preferences. The research sheds light on how markups on key household items had already taken off in the years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic. “I was surprised to... View Details
Keywords: by Rachel Layne
  • Article

Happiness on Tap: Piped Water Adoption in Urban Morocco

By: Florencia Devoto, Esther Duflo, Pascaline Dupas, William Pariente and Vincent Pons
Connecting private dwellings to the water main is expensive and typically cannot be publicly financed. We show that households' willingness to pay for a private connection is high when it can be purchased on credit, not because a connection improves health but because... View Details
Keywords: Water Supply; Urban Development; Household; Credit; Well-being; Morocco
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  • 2021
  • Working Paper

Housing Consumption and the Cost of Remote Work

By: Christopher Stanton and Pratyush Tiwari
This paper estimates housing choice differences between households with and without remote workers. Prior to the pandemic, the expenditure share on housing was more than seven percent higher for remote households compared to similar non-remote households in the same... View Details
Keywords: Remote Work; Geographic Mobility; Housing; Cost; Geographic Location; Income
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  • 05 Aug 2024
  • Research & Ideas

Watching for the Next Economic Downturn? Follow Corporate Debt

countries. Construction, finance, and household credit, which is more prominent in wealthier countries. Firms that offer lending but aren’t subject to the same stringent rules as banks, including leasing or View Details
Keywords: by Rachel Layne
  • Article

Targeting Weather Insurance Markets

By: Anita Mukherjee, Shawn Cole and Jeremy Tobacman
The suitability of insurance products often depends greatly on individual circumstances. This paper examines the challenges of heterogeneity in a relatively new product, weather‐indexed insurance. This index insurance product has been launched in over a dozen... View Details
Keywords: Index Insurance; Labor Markets; Self-insurance; Self-protection; Weather; Insurance; Markets; Household; Risk Management
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  • 2025
  • Working Paper

Climate Risk and the U.S. Insurance Gap: Measurement, Drivers and Implications

By: Parinitha Sastry, Tess Scharlemann, Ishita Sen and Ana-Maria Tenekedjieva
In a world with rising risk, how much are U.S. households willing to pay for homeowners insurance, and what does their demand imply for the future of insurance markets? We provide the first estimates of household willingness to pay for homeowners insurance and the... View Details
Keywords: Climate Change; Risk and Uncertainty; Insurance; Personal Finance; Consumer Behavior; Mortgages
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  • 20 Feb 2018
  • Working Paper Summaries

Stock Market Returns and Consumption

Keywords: by Marco Di Maggio, Amir Kermani, and Kaveh Majlesi; Financial Services
  • March 2025
  • Article

Optimal Illiquidity

By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, Christopher Clayton, Christopher Harris, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian
We study the socially optimal level of illiquidity in an economy populated by households with taste shocks and present bias with naive beliefs. The government chooses mandatory contributions to accounts, each with a different pre-retirement withdrawal penalty.... View Details
Keywords: Retirement; Financial Liquidity; Personal Finance; Saving
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  • 2022
  • Working Paper

Optimal Illiquidity

By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, Christopher Clayton, Christopher Harris, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian
We calculate the socially optimal level of illiquidity in an economy populated by households with taste shocks and naive present bias. The government chooses mandatory contributions to accounts, each witha different pre-retirement withdrawal penalty. Collected... View Details
Keywords: Illiquidity; Commitment; Flexibility; Savings; Social Security; Retirement; Government Legislation; Taxation; Saving
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  • 2022
  • Working Paper

Credit and the Family: The Economic Consequences of Closing the Credit Gap of U.S. Couples

By: Olivia S. Kim
Marital property rights strengthen secondary earners’ economic power by giving them access to credit markets. I study how this crucial yet understudied feature of property laws influences household decision-making. The 2013 reversal of the Truth-in-Lending Act... View Details
Keywords: Household; Credit; Equality and Inequality; Income; Policy; Family and Family Relationships
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  • September 2003 (Revised January 2004)
  • Case

Alessi: Evolution of an Italian Design Factory (A)

By: Youngme E. Moon, Vincent Dessain and Anders Sjoman
Alessio Alessi, head of distribution at family-run Alessi S.p.A., is facing price and brand confusion among customers and is considering reorganizing Alessi's worldwide network of distributors. By describing the challenges facing Alessi, an internationally acclaimed... View Details
Keywords: Family Business; Transition; Cost Management; Brands and Branding; Product Positioning; Distribution; Production; Problems and Challenges; Networks; Consumer Products Industry
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  • Teaching Interest

Overview

By: Peter Tufano
Tufano is the convener for an innovative global doctoral reading group, The Financial Economics of Climate and Sustainability (FECS). This novel course, taught with professors from Yale, Columbia, Stanford, Texas, Imperial, NYU, Mannheim, and Oxford brings together... View Details
  • 2010
  • Other Unpublished Work

Is High School the Right Time to Teach Self-control? The Effect of Financial Education and Mathematics Courses on Savings Behavior

By: Shawn A. Cole and Gauri Kartini Shastry
Household financial behavior affects household welfare and the economy at large. Yet our understanding of how to improve financial decisions is limited. Recent literature and policy attention have focused on financial education, for example, in high school. We use... View Details
Keywords: Saving; Financial Management; Secondary Education; Behavior; Decision Choices and Conditions; Personal Finance; Household
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    Peter Tufano

    Peter Tufano is a Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School and Senior Advisor to the Harvard Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability. From 2011 to 2021, he served as the Peter Moores Dean at View Details

    Keywords: asset management; banking; brokerage; credit card; education industry; energy; federal government; financial services; insurance industry; investment banking industry; microfinance; mining; nonprofit industry; oil ＆ gas; petroleum; real estate; retail financial services; state government; utilities; video games
    • Article

    Present Bias Causes and Then Dissipates Auto-enrollment Savings Effects

    By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson and Peter Maxted
    Present bias causes procrastination, which leads households to stick with auto-enrollment defaults. However, present bias also engenders overconsumption. Separation from each employer generates a rollover of 401(k) balances to an individual retirement account (IRA)... View Details
    Keywords: Present Bias; Procrastination; Personal Finance; Decision Making; Social Psychology; Retirement
    Related
    • 29 Apr 2009
    • Working Paper Summaries

    Female Empowerment: Impact of a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines

    Keywords: by Nava Ashraf, Dean Karlan & Wesley Yin; Financial Services

      John Beshears

      John Beshears is the Albert J. Weatherhead Jr. Professor of Business Administration in the Negotiation, Organizations & Markets Unit, teaching the second-year MBA course "Negotiation." He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.... View Details

      • 21 Nov 2022
      • Research & Ideas

      Buy Now, Pay Later: How Retail's Hot Feature Hurts Low-Income Shoppers

      Online shopping features that let consumers pay for goods in interest-free installments exploded during the pandemic, but new research questions the riskiness of such services: Are people getting in over their heads? Buy now, pay later (BNPL) View Details
      Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Retail; Financial Services; Technology
      • September 2023
      • Article

      Customer Churn and Intangible Capital

      By: Scott R. Baker, Brian Baugh and Marco Sammon
      Intangible capital is a crucial and growing piece of firms’ capital structure, but many of its distinct components are difficult to measure. We develop and make available several new firm-level metrics regarding a key component of intangible capital – firms’ customer... View Details
      Keywords: Customer Base; Transaction Data; Customer Churn; Intangible Capital; Capital Structure; Measurement and Metrics; Customers
      Related
      • 2006
      • Working Paper

      The Effect of Dividends on Consumption

      By: Malcolm Baker, Stefan Nagel and Jeffrey Wurgler
      Classical models predict that the division of stock returns into dividends and capital appreciation does not affect investor consumption patterns, while mental accounting and other economic frictions predict that investors have a higher propensity to consume from stock... View Details
      Keywords: Demand and Consumers; Personal Finance; Investment Return; Household
      Related