Search Results
Journal Article
Helping the poor accumulate assets
Having assets (a bank account, a car, an insured home, a good credit rating) does more than help families weather a crisis. It can move them out of poverty permanently, with benefits to individuals, government, corporations, and society as a whole.
Journal Article
Kids Bank Encourages Early Saving in Fort Worth
A unique partnership between Unity One Federal Credit Union and Fort Worth's Washington Heights Elementary School created a "Kids Bank" that encourages savings and teaches children valuable financial skills that will benefit them for a lifetime.
Speech
Enhancing payment system speed, efficiency and security
Keynote remarks at the TCH Annual Payments Symposium and Business Meeting, New York City.
Journal Article
A nation of spendthrifts? An analysis of trends in personal and gross saving
The steep drop in the U.S. personal saving rate over the last decade has fueled speculation that Americans are spending recklessly. But alternative measures of personal saving show that households are actually setting aside a larger share of their resources than the official figures suggest. In addition, government saving has risen markedly, leading to an increase in overall domestic saving that has helped finance a surge in U.S. investment.
Journal Article
RAISE Texas: moving Texans towards financial success
What began several years ago as a network of matched savings programs to encourage low-income Texans to save has blossomed into a statewide, comprehensive asset-building movement now known as RAISE Texas.
Journal Article
Tax reform and personal saving
Working Paper
Aging and strategic learning: the impact of spousal incentives on financial literacy
American women tend to be less financially literate than men, which is consistent with a household division of labor in which men manage finances. However, women also tend to outlive their husbands, so they will eventually need to take over this task. Using a new survey of older couples, I find that women acquire financial literacy as they approach widowhood. At an estimated increase of 0.04 standard deviations per year approaching widowhood, 80 percent of women in the sample would catch up with their husbands prior to the expected onset of widowhood. These findings reflect actual increases ...
Journal Article
Saving less
Working Paper
Personal-bankruptcy cycles
This paper estimates the dynamics of the personal-bankruptcy rate over the business cycle by exploiting large cross-state variation in recessions and bankruptcies. We find that bankruptcy rates are significantly higher than normal during a recession and rise as a recession persists. After a recession ends, there is a hangover whereby bankruptcy rates begin to fall but remain above normal for several more quarters. Recovery periods see a strong bounce-back effect with bankruptcy rates significantly below normal for several quarters. Despite the significant increases in bankruptcies that occur ...