During the Great Recession, the collapse of consumption across the U.S. varied greatly but systematically with house-price declines. We find that financial distress among U.S. households amplified the sensitivity of consumption to house-price shocks. We uncover two essential facts: (1) the...

For many goods and services, such as cellular-phone service and debit-card transactions, the price of the next unit of service depends on past usage. As a result, consumers who are inattentive to their past usage but are aware of contract terms may remain uncertain about the price of the next...

This study uses a unique data source on consumer credit card usage to examine the impact of billing disclosure changes mandated by the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act on consumers' debt payment behaviors. Data are from the Ohio State University's Consumer...

In recent years, some Canadian politicians and powerful interest groups have issued increasingly vocal calls for dramatic regulatory interventions into the country's payment cards system. In particular, they have called for a "hard cap" price-controls on interchange fees, a ban on contractual...

Credit cards are one of the most common forms of credit offered to consumers and one in which information is highly standardized through mandated disclosures. Three experiments examine the effects of affect inductions (mild positive or anxious affect) on the use of credit card disclosure...

We provide the first economic research on `buy now, pay later' (BNPL): an unregulated FinTech credit product enabling consumers to defer payments interest-free into instalments. In 2021 transactions by BNPL firms are charged to 19.5% of active credit cards in our UK data. Charging a 0% interest,...

Some food items that are commonly considered unhealthy also tend to elicit impulsive responses. The pain of paying in cash can curb impulsive urges to purchase such unhealthy food products. Credit card payments, in contrast, are relatively painless and weaken impulse control. Consequently,...

This study shows that individuals' habits in grocery shopping are incrementally useful in predicting their credit card payment behaviors and that such incremental predictive power can translate into incremental profits for firms. Guided by prior work, we identify five broad grocery shopping...

On November 14th, 2014, SUERF – The European Money and Finance Forum – and CNMV, Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores – the Spanish Authority for supervision of securities markets – jointly organized a conference in Madrid: Challenges in Securities Markets Regulation: Investor...

The intersection of research and policy on consumer credit often has a Goldilocks feel. Some researchers and policymakers posit that consumer credit markets produce too much credit. Other researchers and policymakers posit that markets produce too little credit. I review theories and evidence on...