Paige Marta Skiba has conducted innovative research in behavioral law and economics and commercial law, particularly on topics related to her economics dissertation, Behavior in High-Interest Credit Markets. Her current research focuses on the causes and consequences of borrowing on high-interest credit, such as payday loans, auto-title loans and pawnshops, and labor arbitration. She has received numerous research grants and fellowships from institutions such as the National Science Foundation, the RussellSage Foundation, the National Institute on Aging, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, the Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance, and the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy. Professor Skiba serves on the board of the American Law and Economics Association and the Society for Empirical Legal Studies. She is currently chair of the Association of American Law Schools’ Law and Economic Section. She has been a visiting scholar at the London School of Economics, Universite Paris Nanterre, and the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at the University of California, Berkeley. She earned her Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2007. Professor Skiba teaches Bankruptcy and Behavioral Law and Economics to J.D. students. She also teaches Law and Economics, Behavioral Law and Economics, and Econometrics for Legal Research in the Ph.D. Program in Law and Economics.
John Gathergood is Professor of Economics at the University of Nottingham. His research focuses on understanding consumer behavior in financial markets. He publishes in leading academic journals in economics and finance including the American Economic Review, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of the European Economic Association, Economic Journal and Management Science. He also publishes in journals in a wider range of disciplines, including the Journal of Marketing Research, Nature Human Behavior, and Social Psychological and Personality Science. He has conducted research in partnership with Argus Analytics, Barclays Stockbroking, Experian, Lloyds Banking Group, National Employee Savings Trust, Natwest Markets and Rightmove. He has also undertaken pro bono advisory work for the third sector including the Money Advice Trust and Stepchange debt advice charities. Much of his research involves collaboration with firms and policymakers on research useful for both knowledge and practice.
Young Hwa Seok is a Senior Economist at the Federal Reserve Board. Her research interests include household finance, consumer behavior and bank regulation. She earned a PhD in Applied Economics from Cornell University.
We measure financial sophistication by observing the use of a credit card balance transfer strategy. Examining trends before and after the phase-out of this strategy due to the 2009 CARD Act, financially sophisticated borrowers are less risky, face more attractive card terms, and pay lower fees. We find no evidence that card lenders price sophistication into initial card terms such as APR or credit limits. The prevalence of sophisticated borrowers in a zip code strongly correlates with local graduation and unemployment rates. We also document positive spillovers of credit card sophistication onto usage and risk for other consumer loans.
Stephanie Tully is an assistant professor of marketing at University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, and has recently been named a MSI Young Scholar. She studies the impact of consumers’ resources of money and time. Her research tackles questions like, how does feeling financially constrained change the way consumers make choices, why are some sources of money treated differently than others, and how to encourage consumers to use their time or money to improve their lives. Stephanie’s research has been published in top academic journals including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Consumer Research, and Journal of Marketing Research among others. Her research has won multiple awards and has been featured in popular press outlets such as Forbes and the Wall Street Journal.
This talk introduces the concept of psychological ownership of money— the notion that individuals perceive money in differing degrees as their own—and demonstrates its influence on financial decisions, including individuals’ interest in using financing (e.g., credit and loans) and accessing government benefits (e.g., EITC benefits). A first project demonstrates that psychological ownership of borrowed money predicts individuals’ Google search behavior, their willingness to borrow, and their interest in using specific debt forms. Moreover, psychological ownership of borrowed money predicts borrowing decisions over and above other factors such as debt aversion and financial literacy. A second project examines whether subtle message framing that increases psychological ownership of money can encourage eligible, low-income individuals to apply for government benefits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Finally, the talk will discuss implications of psychological ownership of money across political parties. Taken together, this talk highlights the important role of psychological ownership of money in individuals’ financial decisions and charts paths forward for future research.
Claudia Olivetti is the George J. Records 1956 Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College and a Research Associate in the NBER’s Labor Studies and Development of the American Economy Programs. She is the co-director of the NBER Study Group on “Gender in the Economy.” Her research focuses on women in the labor market including wages, hours, and careers and on intergenerational mobility and marriage institutions in historical perspective. She has worked on the baby boom and maternal health and on historical and comparative perspectives on the gender gap. Olivetti received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 2001, and also holds a Laurea in Statistics and Economics from the University of Rome-La Sapienza. Prior to joining Dartmouth College, Olivetti was on the faculty at Boston College and Boston University, and a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University. Olivetti has received grants from the National Science Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation and the Norwegian Research Council. Her work has been published in the top economics journals, including the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the Review of Economic Studies and the Quarterly Journal of Economics.
Women earn far less than men, and that is especially true of mothers relative to fathers. Much of the widening occurs with family formation. Women with young children work far fewer hours per week than do others. But what happens on the ‘other side of the mountain’ as the children grow up and eventually leave home? The answer is that women work more hours and transition to higher-earning positions. The motherhood penalty is greatly reduced, and by their 50s women with and without children earn nearly the same amount. But fathers manage to maintain their relative gains and do monumentally better than mothers, women without children and men without children.
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