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.

A forest fire burns just beyond a neighborhood.

Mortgage Markets

Working Paper

California Wildfires, Property Damage, and Mortgage Repayment

WP 23-05/R – This paper examines wildfires’ impact on mortgage repayment using novel data that combines property-level damages and mortgage performance data.

Consumer Credit

Working Paper

The Opioid Epidemic and Consumer Credit Supply: Evidence from Credit Cards

WP 23-28 – Using a unique data set of unsolicited credit card offer mailings by banks to consumers, we investigate how opioid abuse affects consumer credit supply in the U.S.

Event

Oct

19-20

2023

New Perspectives on Consumer Behavior in Credit and Payments Markets

Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia

Woman sitting in a kitchen with her cell phone, looking worried.

Are Rising Rents Raising Consumer Debt and Delinquency?

In this CFI Research Brief, I examine whether the sharp rise in rents since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic has been associated with a deterioration in the household finances of renters.

CFI in Focus: A Guide to the Philadelphia Fed’s Multifaceted Contributions to Housing and Mortgage Research and Policy

The Philadelphia Fed has one of the largest concentrations of housing and mortgage experts in the Federal Reserve System. This CFI in Focus article describes how we engage in housing- and mortgage-related topics in monetary policy, bank supervision, public outreach and convenings, and in producing research and data resources.

Consumer Credit

Working Paper

Can Everyone Tap into the Housing Piggy Bank? Racial Disparities in Access to Home Equity

WP 23-25 – This paper documents large racial disparities in the ability of homeowners to access their housing wealth without moving.

A drone captures a bird's eye view of the ocean overtaking coastal homes.

Regional Economics

Working Paper

Who Bears Climate-Related Physical Risk?

WP 23-29 – This paper combines data on current and future property-level physical risk from major climate-related perils (storms, floods, hurricanes, and wildfires) that owner-occupied single-family residences face with data on local economic characteristics to study the geographic and demographic distribution of such risks in the contiguous United States.