Consumer Finance

This report is part of a quarterly series on key observations from the Labor, Income, Finances, and Expectations (LIFE) Survey. Data from the survey provide insight into consumers’ recent financial lives and their future expectations.

WP 26-10 – We study how past experiences with fraud affect individuals’ likelihood of taking precautionary action in credit markets when faced with a new shock that raises their fraud risks.

WP 26-09 – The author examines the challenges of economic forecasting and model misspecification errors confronted by financial institutions implementing the novel current expected credit loss (CECL) allowance methodology and its impact on model risk and bias in CECL projections.

WP 26-03 – Administrative data are used to establish facts on terms, usage, and default rate of credit card accounts. A credit card model is developed to explain the facts. The model explains high MPCs and implies the rate caps are welfare-reducing.

WP 21-42/R – Do cognitive biases call for regulation to limit the use of credit? We incorporate over-optimistic and rational borrowers into an incomplete markets model with consumer bankruptcy.