We examine the effect of personal, two-way communication on the behavior of borrowers, who have fallen behind on their consumer loan payments. While the lender has informed all borrowers about the delinquency through an automatically generated letter, some borrowers also receive a phone call...

Exploiting 150 million points of purchase by US households, we examine how negative ESG shocks ripple through product market and shape consumption. We show that the sales of affected products drop by an average of 5 - 10%, comparing with that of unaffected products consumed by the same...

The aim of the article is to analyse the structure of consumer behaviour models and their applications to financial behaviour. The paper is theoretical in nature, examining generational breakdowns and selected trends in consumer behaviour. An analysis of the 'rules' significant for types of...

We estimate the impact of Covid-induced working from home (WFH) on offline consumer spending in urban agglomerations. Our analysis draws on postcode-level data on card transactions and WFH patterns in major German cities between January 2019 and May 2022. We address endogeneity in WFH uptake by...

Investors increasingly can obtain assistance from “robo-advisors,” artificial intelligence–enabled digitalized service agents imbued with anthropomorphic design elements that can communicate using natural language. The present article considers the impact of anthropomorphized robo-advisors...

Are market agents more or less moral in times of crisis? Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a natural experiment, we provide causal evidence for an increase in social responsibility and propose moral consistency and risk preferences as behavioral drivers. Two experiments conducted before and during...

Since a mysterious creator under the alias Satoshi Nakamoto (a pseudonym) launched first successful cryptocurrency in January 2009, he (or could be she) also opened the door for never-ending criticism, claims, arguments, plethora of articles, and media frenzy all contemplating what Bitcoin is....

We investigate the linkage between business cycle convergence and financial portfolio choice for a panel of 18 EU countries. We construct an index of similarity of financial portfolios which we then put into context with the view that “the financial world” has an impact on business cycles...

In an economy with a sovereign wealth fund (SWF), the government may draw on the fund to supplement other government revenues. If the fund is invested in risky assets, this introduces a new stochastic element into the government’s budget. We analyze the interaction between the draw from and...

Can fluctuations in climate affect economic activity by altering beliefs about the economy? Using new data on subjective well-being and economic sentiment, this paper documents a causal effect of extreme temperatures (below 15 and above 85 degrees Fahrenheit) on beliefs about current and future...