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
Consumer Credit with Over-Optimistic Borrowers
WP 21-42 – 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.
Consumer Finance
What is the Consumer Finance Institute?
We study credit and payment markets to understand how they affect consumers and the economy.
Brief
How Consumers Made Ends Meet During the COVID-19 Pandemic
07 Dec ’21
To gauge how the unprecedented economic downturn and related surge in unemployment affected individual households as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, this latest research brief focused on the strategies respondents used to help make ends meet based on data from the Consumer Finance Institute’s COVID-19 Survey of Consumers.
Working Paper
Financial Consequences of Severe Identity Theft in the U.S.
WP 21-41 – We examine how a negative shock from severe identity theft affects consumer credit market behavior in the United States.
Event
Sep
9-10
2021
New Perspectives on Consumer Behavior in Credit and Payments Markets Conference – 2021
Virtual
Working Paper
Dynamic Pricing of Credit Cards and the Effects of Regulation
WP 21-38 – We construct a two-period model of revolving credit with asymmetric information and adverse selection.
Working Paper
Reducing Strategic Default in a Financial Crisis
WP 21-36 – We document that increasing penalties for default reduces strategic default in financial crises by exploiting the 2009 changes to Canadian consumer insolvency regulations.
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.
Report
Examining Resolution of Mortgage Forbearances and Delinquencies – November 2021
The Risk Assessment, Data Analysis, and Research (RADAR) Group has created a monthly report examining mortgage forbearances and delinquencies.