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Financial Literacy Seminar Series | Johannes Stroebel

Bio: Johannes Stroebel

Johannes Stroebel is a Professor of Finance and the Boxer Faculty Fellow at the New York University Stern School of Business. He joined NYU in 2013 from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he was the Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Economics. Professor Stroebel conducts research in finance, macroeconomics, and real estate economics. He has won numerous awards, including the AQR Asset Management Institute Young Researcher Prize and the Brattle Award for the best paper published in the Journal of Finance. He has also won an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in Economics. Professor Stroebel read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Merton College, Oxford, where he won the Hicks and Webb Medley Prize for the best performance in Economics. He earned a Ph.D. in Economics at Stanford University, where he held the Bradley and Kohlhagen Fellowships at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

Financial Literacy Seminar Series | Vincent Yao

Bio: Vincent Yao

Vincent Yao is the AREA Professor of Real Estate, Associate Professor, Director of Real Estate Center and Director of the College Ph.D. Program in the Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University in Atlanta GA, USA. He is also a senior research fellow at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and a research fellow at the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. He holds visiting chair professorship at several universities in China. He received his BA from Renmin University of China and Ph.D. in Economics from State University of New York at Albany.

Prior to joining GSU, he spent over nine years as a director in Fannie Mae, responsible for overseeing a credit portfolio of $3 trillion loans guaranteed and securitized by the company. He was also the business sponsor of corporate models used in credit risk functions.

His current research interests are household finance, real estate finance, and housing policies. His papers have been published in the American Economic Review, Journal of Financial Economics, Management Science, Journal of Urban Economics, Real Estate Economics, and Journal of Financial Intermediation etc.

His recent research has focused on the following areas:

  • Effect of disruptive forces, e.g., technology and national disasters, on households
  • Transmission of Monetary and Other Policies to Households
  • Financial Decision Making of Households
  • Spillover Effect of Foreclosures

Abstract

Rising student debt is considered one of the creeping threats of our time. This paper examines the effect of student debt relief on individual credit and labor market outcomes. We exploit the plausibly-random debt discharge, affecting thousands of borrowers across the US, due to the inability of National Collegiate, the largest owner of private student loan debt, to prove chain of title of these debts. Using hand-collected lawsuits filings matched with individual credit bureau information, we find that borrowers experiencing the debt relief shock are significantly more likely to engage in deleveraging, by both reducing their demand for credit and limiting the use of existing credit accounts, and borrowers are also significantly less likely to default on other accounts. These borrowers’ geographical mobility increases, as well as, their probability to change job and ultimately improve their income. These findings speak to the benefits of intervening in the student loan market to reduce the consequences of debt overhang problems by helping borrowers unable to afford their student loan debts.

Financial Literacy Seminar Series | Erik Hurst

Bio: Erik Hurst

Erik Hurst, is the V. Duane Rath Professor of Economics and John E. Jeuck Faculty Fellow at the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business. He is also the current Deputy Director of the University of Chicago’s Becker-Friedman Institute.

He serves as a research associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research, a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and a co-editor of the National Bureau of Economics Macroeconomics Annual.  From 2014-2017, Hurst served as a co-editor for the Journal of Political Economy.

Professor Hurst is a macroeconomist whose research has advanced our understanding of labor markets, consumer theory, housing markets, regional economics, mortgage markets, and entrepreneurship.  His research on these topics has appeared in top economic journals and is frequently cited in the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Professor Hurst received the 2006 TIAA-CREF Paul Samuelson Award for the best published paper dealing with household financial security and was also awarded the 2012 Ewing Marion Kauffman Prize Medal for Distinguished Research in Entrepreneurship bestowed annually to one scholar under the age of 40 whose research has made a significant contribution to the entrepreneurship literature.

In both 2008 and 2010, the Chicago Booth students awarded Professor Hurst the Emory Williams Award for Teaching Excellence.   In 2013, the students awarded him their Faculty Excellence Award for his commitment to teaching.  In 2017, Hurst was awarded the McKinsey prize for best teacher at Chicago Booth.

Professor Hurst earned a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1993 from Clarkson University. He went on to earn a master’s degree in economics in 1995 and a PhD in economics in 1999 from the University of Michigan.

Financial Literacy Seminar Series | Jason Seligman

Bio: Jason Seligman

Jason Seligman is a senior economist for retirement and investor research at ICI. He works on investor behavior and retirement policy issues. Before joining ICI in 2017, Seligman served in the federal government as an economist for the US Treasury Office of Economic Policy and at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. Before his most recent work at Treasury, Seligman was a faculty member at The Ohio State University and University of Georgia. Seligman holds a PhD in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BA in economics from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Abstract

We consider the roles of trust and financial literacy in engaging with financial markets – both the number of ways in which people engage and their individual preferences for how to engage. We find that both trust and financial literacy are strongly related to financial market participation but that the two channels work differently. Trust is more uniformly related to increases in financial market participation, with only the rate of increase changing over the scale. In contrast and in line with the old saw “a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing,” we find that increases in financial literacy from low-to-mid levels are associated with an initial decline in financial market participation but that subsequently an increasingly positive relationship emerges. Our findings suggest that trust and financial literacy play different roles, but each is related to investment behaviors in important ways.

Financial Literacy Seminar Series | Saumitra Jha

Bio: Saumitra Jha

Saumitra Jha is an Associate Professor of Political Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Professor, by courtesy, of Economics and of Political Science, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. Saum holds a BA from Williams College, master’s degrees in economics and mathematics from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD in economics from Stanford University. Prior to returning to Stanford, he was an Academy Scholar at Harvard University. Saum has been a Fellow of the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance and the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University and received the Michael Wallerstein Award for best published article in Political Economy from the American Political Science Association in 2014 for his research on ethnic tolerance. Saumitra has consulted on economic and political risk issues for the United Nations/ WTO, the World Bank and other organizations.

Abstract

How can we help individuals handle financial decisions in an increasingly complex environment? We explore an easily scalable avenue for improving financial understanding: learning by online trading in stocks. We randomly assign 1345 adults incentives and opportunities to trade stocks for 4-7 weeks, with no additional educational content. The treatment significantly improves financial literacy and attenuates the gender gap in self-assessed financial knowledge. Treated individuals are more likely to subsequently invest in stocks and less likely to seek external advice. The effects strengthen for those exposed to index funds, foreign assets, and rising or more volatile asset prices.

Financial Literacy Seminar Series | Mary Zaki

Bio: Mary Zaki

Mary Zaki is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics of the University of Maryland. Her research focuses on household finance and food consumption issues especially among low-income populations. She currently is studying household spending patterns between paycheck receipts, the effects of high cost credit on food consumption, the relationship between pay frequency and price-saving shopping activities, the effects of social welfare program work-requirements on labor outcomes, the effects of credit instrument disclosures on consumer understanding and subsequent borrowing and purchasing decisions, the effectiveness of food access programs in food deserts and the effect of school breakfast program expansions on student health outcomes and test scores. She received her B.S. and B.A. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Economics from Northwestern University.

Abstract

I construct a new record of credit terms from mail-order catalogs of the 20th Century and find that when creditors switched from dollar to interest rate price disclosure in the 1960s, prices starkly jumped and price sensitivity to cost-of-funds diminished. I investigate possible explanations by using accompanying historical evidence and conjecture that the shift in price disclosure method diminished consumer ability to determine credit cost obligations and subsequently creditor incentives to compete on price. In an experiment I find that interest rate price disclosures do indeed prevent consumers from determining cost obligations, leading to insensitivity to price and non-optimal borrowing and purchasing.
2019

May

16

3:30 PM - 5:00 PM

The George Washington University
Duques Hall, Room 453

May

2

3:30 PM - 5:00 PM

George Washington University School of Business
Duquès Hall, Room 651

April

18

3:30 PM - 5:00 PM

George Washington University School of Business
Duquès Hall, Minerva Room (451)

April

4

3:30 PM - 5:00 PM

George Washington University School of Business
Duquès Hall, Minerva Room (451)

March

21

3:30 PM - 5:00 PM

George Washington University School of Business
Duquès Hall, Minerva Room (451)

March

7

3:30 PM - 5:00 PM

George Washington University School of Business
Duquès Hall, Minerva Room (451)