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Report
Financial education and the debt behavior of the young
Brown, Meta; Zafar, Basit; Grigsby, John; Wen, Jaya; Van der Klaauw, Wilbert (2013-09-01)
Young Americans are heavily reliant on debt and have clear financial literacy shortcomings, yet evidence on the relationship between financial education and youths? subsequent debt behavior remains both limited and mixed. In this paper, we study the effects of exposure to financial training on debt outcomes in early adulthood among a large and representative sample of young Americans. Variation in exposure to financial training comes from statewide changes in high school graduation requirements regarding financial literacy, economics, and mathematics that were mandated in the late 1990s and ...
Staff Reports , Paper 634

Report
Should Mothers Work? How Perceptions of the Social Norm Affect Individual Attitudes Toward Work in the U.S.
Cortes, Patricia; Koşar, Gizem; Pan, Jessica; Zafar, Basit (2022-11-01)
We study how peer beliefs shape individual attitudes toward maternal labor supply using realistic hypothetical scenarios that elicit recommendations on the labor supply choices of a mother with a young child and an information treatment embedded within representative surveys. Across the scenarios, we find that individuals systematically overestimate the extent of gender conservativeness among the people around them. Exposure to information on peer beliefs leads to a shift in recommendations, driven largely by information-based belief updating. The information treatment also increases ...
Staff Reports , Paper 1038

Discussion Paper
Introducing the SCE Credit Access Survey
Zafar, Basit; Van der Klaauw, Wilbert (2014-11-20)
Today, we are releasing new data on consumers? experiences and expectations regarding credit demand. We?ve been collecting these data every four months since mid-2013, as part of our Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE). Other data sources describing consumer credit either provide aggregates that are an interaction of credit supply and demand (such as the FRBNY Consumer Credit Panel), or show only short-term changes in supply and demand (as reported by the supply side in the Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey), or are too infrequent to provide a real-time picture of changes in consumer ...
Liberty Street Economics , Paper 20141120

Report
Human capital investments and expectations about career and family
Zafar, Basit; Wiswall, Matthew (2016-08-01)
This paper studies how individuals believe human capital investments will affect their future career and family life. We conducted a survey of high-ability currently enrolled college students and elicited beliefs about how their choice of college major, and whether to complete their degree at all, would affect a wide array of future events, including future earnings, employment, marriage prospects, potential spousal characteristics, and fertility. We find that students perceive large ?returns" to human capital not only in their own future earnings, but also in a number of other dimensions ...
Staff Reports , Paper 792

Report
Home price expectations and behavior: evidence from a randomized information experiment
Fuster, Andreas; Armona, Luis; Zafar, Basit (2016-10-19)
Home price expectations are believed to play an important role in housing dynamics, yet we have limited understanding of how they are formed and how they affect behavior. Using a unique ?information experiment? embedded in an online survey, this paper investigates how consumers? home price expectations respond to past home price growth and how they impact investment decisions. After eliciting respondents? initial beliefs about past and future local home price changes, we present a random subset of the respondents with factual information about past (one- or five-year) changes and then ...
Staff Reports , Paper 798

Discussion Paper
(Unmet) Credit Demand of American Households
Livingston, Max; Van der Klaauw, Wilbert; Zafar, Basit (2013-11-06)
One of the direct effects of the 2008 financial crisis on U.S. households was a sharp tightening of credit. Households that had previously been able to borrow relatively freely through credit cards, home equity loans, or personal loans suddenly found those lines closed off—just when they needed them the most. In recent months, aggregate statistics such as the Federal Reserve’s Consumer Credit series and the Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey have shown a gradual improvement in consumer credit. The former series is an indicator of interaction of credit supply and demand, while the latter ...
Liberty Street Economics , Paper 20131106

Discussion Paper
Introducing the SCE Housing Survey
Zafar, Basit; Fuster, Andreas; Cocci, Matthew; Van der Klaauw, Wilbert (2014-09-08)
In February 2014, we administered a survey on housing-related issues to the Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE) panelists. Our primary goal was to secure rich and high-quality information on consumers? experiences and expectations regarding housing. The survey, among other things, collected data on households? perceptions and expectations of the growth in home prices, their intentions regarding moving or buying a new home, and their access to credit. In addition, for homeowners, we collected detailed information on their mortgage debt, past experiences such as foreclosure or refinancing, ...
Liberty Street Economics , Paper 20140908

Discussion Paper
Nudging Inflation Expectations: An Experiment
Armantier, Olivier; Zafar, Basit; Topa, Giorgio; Nelson, Scott; Van der Klaauw, Wilbert (2012-11-05)
Managing consumers? inflation expectations is of critical importance to central banks in the conduct of monetary policy. But managing inflation expectations requires more than just monitoring expectations; it also requires an understanding of how these expectations are formed. In this post, we present results from a new study that investigates how individual consumers use selected information on food prices in forming their inflation expectations. While the provision of this information leads individuals to meaningfully revise expectations of their own-basket inflation rate, we find there is ...
Liberty Street Economics , Paper 20121105

Report
Can subjective expectations data be used in choice models? Evidence on cognitive biases
Zafar, Basit (2010-06-01)
A pervasive concern with the use of subjective data in choice models is that the data are biased and endogenous. This paper examines the extent to which cognitive biases plague subjective data, specifically addressing 1) whether cognitive dissonance affects the reporting of beliefs, and 2) whether individuals exert sufficient mental effort when probed about their subjective beliefs. For this purpose, I collect a unique panel data set of Northwestern University undergraduates that contains their subjective expectations about outcomes specific to different majors in their choice set. I do not ...
Staff Reports , Paper 454

Report
A boost in the paycheck: survey evidence on workers’ response to the 2011 payroll tax cuts
Graziani, Grant; Van der Klaauw, Wilbert; Zafar, Basit (2013)
This paper presents new survey evidence on workers? response to the 2011 payroll tax cuts. While workers intended to spend 10 to 18 percent of their tax-cut income, they reported actually spending 28 to 43 percent of the funds. This is higher than estimates from studies of recent tax cuts, and arguably a consequence of the design of the 2011 tax cuts. The shift to greater consumption than intended is largely unexplained by present-bias or unanticipated shocks, and is likely a consequence of mental accounting. We also use data from a complementary survey to understand the heterogeneous tax-cut ...
Staff Reports , Paper 592

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