Consumer Finance
Our Consumer Finance Institute researches how people earn, spend, save, and invest, as well as how credit markets and payment systems affect the economy. Our goal is to foster a healthy consumer sector, a stable financial system, and a resilient regional and national economy.
Working Paper
Owner-Occupancy Fraud and Mortgage Performance
WP 23-01 – Occupancy fraud has been suggested as a contributor to the housing bubble. We show it was pervasive and remains present. Fraudulent investors accounted for an outsize share of defaults in the bust and pose a risk should prices decline.
CFI COVID-19 Survey of Consumers Data
15 Nov ’22
To gain insights into the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on financial security in the U.S., the Consumer Finance Institute at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia conducted a series of national surveys of consumers beginning in April 2020 and concluding in April 2022.
Consumer Finance
What is the Consumer Finance Institute?
We study credit and payment markets to understand how they affect consumers and the economy.
Article
Q&A: Tom Akana on the COVID-19 Survey and Assessing Consumer Well-Being
01 Dec ’22
In this Q&A, Tom Akana of our Consumer Finance Institute shares what we learned after two years tracking consumer well-being during the pandemic, why it’s important, and where we go from here.
Brief
Cryptocurrency Ownership: Insights from the CFI COVID-19 Survey of Consumers
Since the early 2010s, the rise of so-called cryptocurrencies has received significant attention from financial market participants, policymakers, and academics. Cryptocurrencies are digital or virtual currencies (such as bitcoin, Ethererum, Litecoin, and many others) in which transactions are verified and records are maintained by a decentralized, distributed ledger system using cryptography, rather than by a centralized authority.
Event
Oct
26-27
2022
The Fourth Workshop on Payments, Lending, and Innovations in Consumer Finance
Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
Working Paper
One Threshold Doesn’t Fit All: Tailoring Machine Learning Predictions of Consumer Default for Lower-Income Areas
WP 22-39 – Modeling advances create credit scores that predict default better overall, but raise concerns about their effect on protected groups.
Working Paper
Prior Fraud Exposure and Precautionary Credit Market Behavior
WP 22-36 – This paper studies how past experiences with privacy shocks affect individuals' take-up of precautionary behavior when faced with a new privacy shock in the context of credit markets.
COVID-19
COVID-19 and the Philadelphia Fed
Get the Philadelphia Fed’s latest information, resources, and research on the coronavirus pandemic's impact on businesses, households, and communities.
Consumer Finance
Consumer Finance Institute Visiting Scholars
We regularly invite outside experts in consumer finance and payments to conduct independent research, collaborate with our staff economists and analysts, and participate in our events.
Working Paper
Debtor Fraud in Consumer Debt Renegotiation
WP 22-35 – We study how forcing financially distressed consumer debtors to repay a larger fraction of debt can lead them to misreport data fraudulently.