Search Results
Journal Article
Still charging: the growth of credit card debt between 1992 and 1995
Between 1991 and 1997, consumer revolving credit outstanding more than doubled - from $247 billion to $514 billion. This rapid rise of consumer debt, especially credit card debt, has generated much discussion about its cause, sustainability, and implications. Peter S. Yoo uses the recently released 1995 Survey of Consumer Finances to update a previous study that separated the growth of credit card debt into its two main components: increases in the number of households with credit cards and increases in average credit card balances. As before, the analysis separates the effects of lower- and ...
Journal Article
The long and short (runs) of investing in equities
Working Paper
The baby boom and international capital flows
This paper presents a model of economic growth based on the life-cycle hypothesis to determine the path of international capital flows as the baby boom passes through the U.S. economy. The model predicts that a baby boom causes a temporary increase in capital flow into the U.S. but the increase in capital is not sufficient to maintain the capital-labor ratio in the U.S. The baby boom increases saving in the U.S. but decreases the saving abroad due to the higher world interest rates.
Journal Article
Is increasing wealth a substitute for saving?
Journal Article
A CPI-based bias for GDP?
Working Paper
Age distributions and returns of financial assets
This paper explores the relationship between age distribution and asset returns impled by an overlapping-generations asset pricing model. The model predicts that as more individuals reach the age when the increment to their wealth reaches its maximum, asset returns fall. Cross-sectional evidence from the Survey of Financial Characteristics of Consumers and the Surveys of Consumer Finances indicates that individuals aged 45 to 54 have the largest increment to wealth of all age group. Time series estimates confirm that a close link exists between aggregate household wealth and the size of this ...
Working Paper
Age dependent portfolio selection
This paper addresses the issue of portfolio risk exposure as a function of age, and it focuses the debate by presenting detailed cross-sectional evidence about individual portfolios. It provides new empirical results that characterized the relationship between age and the risk exposure of individual portfolios. The evidence from cross-sectional data suggests that individuals do not follow behavior proscribed by economic theory or by Wall Street advisors, rather the results of this paper suggest that current body of theoretical literature does not adequately describe the behavior of ...
Working Paper
Charging up a mountain of debt: households and their credit cards.
I use the Surveys of Consumer Finances conducted in 1983, 1989 and 1992 to separate the growth of credit card debt into two categories, changes in the number of households with credit cards and changes in households credit card debt. I can then account for the relative contributions of increases in credit card availability, number of households, and average credit card debt. I also use the household income information to quantify the impact of more lower income households with credit cards. Data suggest that the increases in credit card debt is largely attributable to increased average credit ...
Journal Article
Nominal vs. real wage growth?
Journal Article
Charging up a mountain of debt: accounting for the growth of credit card debt
Total U.S. credit card debt has almost doubled since 1988. Little is apparent from the aggregate data, however, about the composition of credit card debt growth. In this article, Peter S. Yoo separates household data into two categories: changes in the number of households with credit cards, and changes in average credit card debt for increased total credit card debt. Moreover, he finds that the principal contributors to the increase are households with above-average incomes rather than low-income households.