Search Results
Report
Financial Education and Household Financial Decisions During the Pandemic
We examine the impact of financial education on credit decisions during COVID-19. The pandemic presented economic challenges, but policy responses provided opportunities for savvy borrowers. Using variation in state-mandated financial education during high school, we find that mandated borrowers reduced revolving credit card balances by larger amounts after stimulus checks were distributed and were more likely to buy homes and refinance mortgages during times of low interest rates. Paused student loan borrowers bound by mandates originated more auto loans and mortgages while reducing growth ...
Working Paper
Savings Versus Debt: The Effects of Survey Question Order on Consumers’ Reported Financial Priorities
Survey after survey indicates that building savings and reducing debt are among the top financial goals for many Americans. However, because of limited resources and inherent trade-offs, achieving these two goals can be challenging and often requires prioritizing one goal over the other. We conduct two survey experiments with national samples of U.S. adults to understand how individuals balance saving and paying off debt, while taking into account survey context and question effects that might influence self-reports of behaviors. Both studies find a significant question order effect, in which ...
Working Paper
Scarcity and Intertemporal Choice
Scarcity is a ubiquitous experience, and existing evidence largely suggests that people become more myopic when they feel their resources are scarce. Importantly, evidence for this proposition comes primarily from contexts in which scarcity threatens needs that require resources imminently. The current work examines instances in which scarcity threatens needs along a broader time horizon. Archival data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s Consumer Finance Institute and five pre-registered studies (N = 7,728) show that the time horizon of threatened needs is an important ...