We study the distribution of savings from mortgage refinancing across income groups during the COVID-19 pandemic. Between February and June 2020, the difference in savings from refinancing between high- and low-income borrowers was 10 times higher than before. This was the result of two factors:...

In this study, we quantify the effects of receiving stocks from certain brands on spending in the brand's stores. We use data from a new FinTech company called Bumped that opens brokerage accounts for its users and rewards them with stocks when they shop at previously elected stores. For...

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...

We study the distribution of savings from mortgage refinancing across income groups during the COVID-19 pandemic. Between February and June 2020, the difference in savings from refinancing between high- and low-income borrowers was ten times higher than before the pandemic. This was the result...

We study whether savings nudges have the unintended consequence of additional borrowing in high-interest credit. We use data from a pre-registered experiment that encouraged 3.1 million bank customers to save via SMS messages and train a machine learning algorithm to predict individual-level...

In this study, we quantify the effects of receiving stocks from certain brands on spending in the brand's stores. We use data from a new FinTech company called Bumped that opens brokerage accounts for its users and rewards them with stocks when they shop at previously elected stores. For...

Title 3 of the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act (2009) limited the marketing and sale of credit cards to college students, nudging them away from these high-rate products. While it reduced card use, we find the nudge also raised student loan balances by 8.4%, 15%...