Household Finance

The standard view of housing markets holds that the flexibility of local housing supplyshaped by factors like geography and regulationstrongly affects the response of house prices, house quantities and population to rising housing demand. However, from 2000 to 2020, we find that higher income growth...

Many community organizations provide services similar to government programs, but there is limited evidence how increased government aid affects the use and availability of charitable services. This study examines how greater access to federal nutrition assistance through schoolwide free meal...

We document substantial racial disparities in consumer bankruptcy outcomes and investigate the role of racial bias in contributing to these disparities. Using data on the near universe of US bankruptcy cases and self-reported and manually-identified measures of race, we show that minority filers are...

We test whether mental alertness, as proxied by sleep disruption, impairs investor trading performance. Using four complementary approaches, we document that retail investors who experience a later sunset time on average earn lower abnormal returns on their trades. These approaches include panel...

This study investigates how occupational AI exposure impacts employment at the intensive margin, i.e., the length of workdays and the allocation of time between work and leisure. Drawing on individual-level time diary data from 20042023, we find that higher AI exposurewhether stemming from the...

This paper examines the impact of political polarization on public trust in the Fed and its influence on macroeconomic expectations. Using a large-scale survey experiment which we fielded on President Trump's 2025 inauguration day, we study how households form beliefs about the Fed regarding its...

Property taxes represent the largest discretionary revenue source for local governments in the United States. Because these taxes are collected by applying a tax rate to an assessed value of a property, the effective tax rate on a property computed as a percentage of its value depends on the tax...

We develop a dynamic urban model combining features of quantitative spatial and macro-housing models. It includes multiple locations, forward-looking households, commuting, costly migration, uninsurable income risk, housing tenure choice, and housing frictions. The model operates in continuous time,...

Headline estimates for the extent of work from home (WFH) differ widely across U.S. surveys. The differences shrink greatly when we harmonize with respect to the WFH concept, target population, and question design. As of 2025, our preferred estimates say that WFH accounts for a quarter of paid...

Paying for college is often a family affair, with both parents and students contributing. We study the effects of college on family finances using administrative data on the universe of federal aid applicants in California linked to credit records. We provide the first comprehensive analysis of how...

Residential properties with the lowest rent levels provide the highest investment returns to their owners. Using detailed rent, cost, and price data from the United States, Belgium, and The Netherlands, we show that this phenomenon holds across housing markets and time. If anything, low-rent units...

Pay-as-you-go (PAYGo) financing is a novel contract that has recently become a popular form of credit, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). PAYGo financing relies on lockout technology that enables the lender to remotely disable the flow benefits of collateral when the borrower...

We examine job-seekers' heterogeneous preferences for nonwage amenities, with a focus on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices, using an incentivized field experiment in Brazil. Our findings reveal that ESG is the most polarizing nonwage amenity across multiple sociodemographic...

This paper proposes that the adoption of the modern U.S. mortgage (i.e., low down payment, long-term, and fixed-rate)led by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Veterans Administration (VA) loan insurance programsset the stage for the mid-twentieth century U.S. baby boom by dramatically...

Student loan forgiveness has been proposed as a means to alleviate soaring student loan burdens. This paper uses administrative credit bureau data to study the distributional, consumption, borrowing, and employment effects of the largest event of student loan forgiveness in history. Beginning in...

When optimizing consumption-savings decisions is costly, people may instead rely on quick-fixes, simple policy functions that avoid these costs. We introduce a model of quick-fixing. To study it empirically, we field a novel survey that measures households' consumption policy functions in response...

We build a general equilibrium model to study how climate transition risks affect energy prices and the valuations of different firms in the energy sector. We consider two types of fossil fuel firms: incumbents that have developed oil reserves they can extract today or tomorrow, and new entrants...

In a typical year, about 5 percent of tenants have an eviction case filed against them. In Nonpayment and Eviction in the Rental Housing Market (NBER Working Paper 33155), John Eric Humphries, Scott T. Nelson, Dam Linh Nguyen, Winnie van Dijk, and Daniel C. Waldinger analyze lease-level landlord...

We use administrative records on the healthcare utilization and economic outcomes of the universe of Danish households to characterize survivors' mental health following their spouse's death. We provide visually clear evidence for the inevitable immediate, large, and lingering adverse impacts and...

We study the economic effects of the interaction of nature loss and climate change in a model that incorporates important aspects of both processes. We capture the distinct ways in which they affect economic activitywith nature constituting a key factor of production and climate change destroying...

How can we use the novel capacities of large language models (LLMs) in empirical research? And how can we do so while accounting for their limitations, which are themselves only poorly understood? We develop an econometric framework to answer this question that distinguishes between two types of...

In this study, we investigate whether reproductive rights affect migration. We do so using a synthetic difference-in-differences design that leverages variation from the 2022 Dobbs decision, which allowed states to ban abortion, and population flows based on change-of-address data from the United...

We define risk transfer as the percent change in the market risk exposure for a group of investors over a given period. We estimate risk transfer using novel data on U.S. investors' portfolio holdings, flows, and returns at the security level with comprehensive coverage across asset classes and...

This paper reviews the debt service ratio (DSR) as a theoretically well-grounded indicator of systemic risk. The DSR has the desirable feature that it fluctuates around a stable level which makes its early warning signals easy to understand and communicate. In contrast, current early warning...

Does the ability to generate verifiable digital financial histories, with customers having data-sharing rights, improve credit access? We answer this using Indias launch of an Open-Banking based public digital payment infrastructure (UPI). Using rarely available data on the universe of consumer...

We study retirement and bank account participation for the universe of U.S. households with a member aged 50 to 59 in the administrative tax data. ZCTA-level average income, income inequality, and racial composition predict retirement account participation for low-income households, conditional on...

We survey a large, representative sample of retail investors in China to elicit their memories of stock market investments and their return expectations. We merge this survey data with administrative transaction data to test a model in which investors selectively recall past experiences to form...

Swedish authorities and international organizations that monitor and comment on Swedish economic policy have argued that Swedish household debt is too high and a threat to financial and macroeconomic stability (FMS). But household debt may become a threat to FMS under essentially three conditions:...

Property tax revenues the largest discretionary source of revenue for local governments - adjust at a pace that is inconsistent with property values in the US. We show that this form of revenue smoothing may be rooted in the political economy of municipalities. Measures of local budget stressors...

The U.S. tax code partially subsidizes out-of-pocket medical spending as itemized medical deductions (IMDs). In this paper, using detailed information in the Health and Retirement Study, I find that while a substantial share of medical spending among older Americans is deducted through the tax code,...

Despite the promise of FinTech lending to expand access to credit to populations without a formal credit history, FinTech lenders primarily lend to applicants with a formal credit history and rely on conventional credit bureau scores as an input to their algorithms. Using data from a large FinTech...

This paper provides evidence that asset testing of social transfers substantially depresses the liquid wealth of the poor. Our setting is Denmark where the low-income elderly receive an annual payment (around $3,000) if their end-of-year liquid wealth is below a threshold (around $15,000). Using...

The rise of super-app digital wallets provides not only a conduit to banks but also internal payment options, including Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL). We examine, for the first time, transactions matched with merchant and consumer information, from a leading e-wallet super-app, and complement the...

This paper explores the determinants of the level of, and trends over time in, Japans household saving rate, with emphasis on the impact of the age structure of the population, and makes projections about future trends therein. The paper finds that Japans household saving rate has not always been...

Migrant remittances are significant but remain relatively costly to send. Policymakers have argued that fintech, specifically, comparison websites like kayak.com but for sending money, can boost financial inclusion and reduce remittance prices. Yet, little is known about how migrants with limited...

Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) is a key innovation in consumer payments. It bundles the sale of a product with a subsidized loan, effectively offering lower prices to low-creditworthiness customers. BNPL thereby allows merchants to price-discriminate among customers with different willingness-to-pay....

Recent research has documented the prevalence and consequences of evictions in the United States, but our understanding of the drivers of eviction and the scope for policy to reduce evictions remains limited. We use novel lease-level ledger data from high-eviction rental markets to characterize key...

We study the direct and indirect effects of randomized entry. In partnership with the two largest service providers in Ghana, we implement a three-step design that randomizes the entry of new financial mobile money vendors, who also sell non-financial goods/services, across local markets. This mixed...

We estimate the causal effect of online sports betting on households' investment, spending, and debt management decisions using household transaction data and a staggered difference-in-differences framework. Following legalization, sports betting spreads quickly, with both the number of participants...

We propose a theory of the complexity of economic decisions. Leveraging a macroeconomic framework of production functions, we conceptualize the mind as a cognitive economy, where a task's complexity is determined by its composition of cognitive operations. Complexity emerges as the inverse of the...

The traditional 30-year, fixed-rate, nonassumable mortgage used by most home buyers in the United States can create strong disincentives to move when interest rates rise. In Household Mobility and Mortgage Rate Lock (NBER Working Paper 32781), Jack Liebersohn and Jesse Rothstein find that rising...

We conduct a survey experiment with a large, politically representative sample of U.S. consumers (5,205 participants) to study how perceptions of the U.S. Federal Reserves (Fed) political stance shape macroeconomic expectations and trust in the Fed. The public is divided on the Feds political...

In Stock Market Wealth and Entrepreneurship (NBER Working Paper 32643), Gabriel Chodorow-Reich, Plamen T. Nenov, Vitor Santos, and Alp Simsek evaluate the relationship between the performance of a households stock market portfolio and the likelihood that someone in that household launches an...

Using credit bureau data, we show that nearly half the increase in student debt since 2010 is due to deferred payments and the expansion of income-driven repayment (IDR) plans. These plans help borrowers smooth consumption, insure income risk, and reduce the effective debt cost. Using a life-cycle...

In this paper, I analyze detailed data on intergenerational transfers in 4 countries (China, India, Japan, and the United States) from the Japan Household Panel Survey on Consumer Preferences and Satisfaction (JHPS-CPS) which has been conducted by the Institute of Social and Economic Research of...