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Report
What would you do with $500? Spending responses to gains, losses, news, and loans
Kaplan, Greg; Fuster, Andreas; Zafar, Basit (2018-03-01)
We use survey questions about spending to investigate features of propensities to consume that are useful for distinguishing between consumption theories. Asking households about their intended spending under various scenarios, we find that 1) responses to unanticipated gains are vastly heterogeneous (either zero or substantially positive), 2) responses to losses are much larger and more widespread than responses to gains, and 3) even those with large responses to gains do not respond to news about future gains. These three findings suggest that limited access to disposable resources is an ...
Staff Reports , Paper 843

Discussion Paper
Introducing the FRBNY Survey of Consumer Expectations: Household Finance Expectations
Armantier, Olivier; Zafar, Basit; Topa, Giorgio; Van der Klaauw, Wilbert (2013-12-06)
In this fourth and final post in our series describing the new FRBNY Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE), we present the final component of the survey, dedicated to household finance. The information collected in the SCE on household income, spending, and access to credit will provide a real-time picture of U.S. households? situation and perceptions as well as rich and unique data for use by policymakers, researchers, and the public. While other surveys, such as the triennial Survey of Consumer Finances, provide data on the finances of U.S. families, few data sources provide timely ...
Liberty Street Economics , Paper 20131206

Report
Personal experiences and expectations about aggregate outcomes
Zafar, Basit; Kuchler, Theresa (2015-10-01)
We use novel survey data to estimate how personal experiences affect household expectations about aggregate economic outcomes in housing and labor markets. We exploit variation in locally experienced house prices to show that individuals systematically extrapolate from recent locally experienced home prices when asked for their expectations about U.S. house price changes over the next year. In addition, higher volatility of locally experienced house prices causes respondents to report a wider distribution over expected future national house price movements. We find similar results for labor ...
Staff Reports , Paper 748

Report
An overview of the Survey of Consumer Expectations
Armantier, Olivier; Zafar, Basit; Topa, Giorgio; Van der Klaauw, Wilbert (2016-11-17)
This report presents an overview of the Survey of Consumer Expectations, a new monthly online survey of a rotating panel of household heads. The survey collects timely information on consumers? expectations and decisions on a broad variety of topics, including but not limited to inflation, household finance, the labor market, and the housing market. There are three main goals of the survey: (1) measuring consumer expectations at a high frequency, (2) understanding how these expectations are formed, and (3) investigating the link between expectations and behavior. This report discusses the ...
Staff Reports , Paper 800

Report
Bayesian social learning, conformity, and stubbornness: evidence from the AP top 25
Zafar, Basit; Stone, Daniel F. (2010)
The recent nonexperimental literature on social learning focuses on showing that observational learning exists, that is, individuals do indeed draw inferences by observing the actions of others. We take this literature a step further by analyzing whether individuals are Bayesian social learners. We use data from the Associated Press (AP) U.S. College Football Poll, a weekly subjective ranking of the top twenty-five teams. The voters' aggregate rankings are available each week prior to when voters have to update their individual rankings, so voters can potentially learn from their peers. We ...
Staff Reports , Paper 453

Report
Information heterogeneity and intended college enrollment
Bleemer, Zachary; Zafar, Basit (2014-08-01)
Despite a robust college premium, college attendance rates in the United States have remained stagnant and exhibit a substantial socioeconomic gradient. We focus on information gaps? specifically, incomplete information about college benefits and costs?as a potential explanation for these patterns. In a nationally representative survey of U.S. household heads, we show that perceptions of college costs and benefits are severely and systematically biased: 74 percent of our respondents underestimate the true benefits of college (average earnings of a college graduate relative to a non-college ...
Staff Reports , Paper 685

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

Journal Article
An overview of the Survey of Consumer Expectations
Zafar, Basit; Van der Klaauw, Wilbert; Armantier, Olivier; Topa, Giorgio (2017-23-02)
The authors present an overview of the New York Fed?s Survey of Consumer Expectations, a monthly online survey of a rotating panel of household heads. The survey collects timely information on respondents? expectations and decisions on a broad variety of topics, including inflation, household finance, the labor market, and the housing market. It has three main goals: (1) measuring consumer expectations at a high frequency, (2) understanding how these expectations are formed, and (3) investigating the link between expectations and behavior. The authors discuss the origins of the survey, the ...
Economic Policy Review , Issue 23-2 , Pages 51-72

Report
Household debt and saving during the 2007 recession
Lee, Donghoon; Chakrabarti, Rajashri; Zafar, Basit; Van der Klaauw, Wilbert (2011)
Using credit report records and data collected from several household surveys, we analyze changes in household debt and saving during the 2007 recession. We find that, while different segments of the population were affected in distinct ways, depending on whether they owned a home, whether they owned stocks, and whether they had secure jobs, the crisis? impact appears to have been widespread, affecting large shares of households across all age, income, and education groups. In response to their deteriorated financial situations, households reduced their average spending and increased their ...
Staff Reports , Paper 482

Report
An experimental investigation of why individuals conform
Zafar, Basit (2009)
Social interdependence is believed to play an important role in how people make individual choices. This paper presents a simple model constructed on the premise that people are motivated by their own payoff as well as by how their actions compare with those of other people in their reference group. I show that conformity of actions may arise either from learning about the norm (social learning), or from adhering to the norm because of image-related concerns (social influence). To disentangle the two empirically, I use the fact that image-related concerns can be present only if actions are ...
Staff Reports , Paper 365

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