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The impact of housing markets on consumer debt: credit report evidence from 1999 to 2012
Zafar, Basit; Stein, Sarah; Brown, Meta (2013)
We investigate the impact of large swings in the housing market on nonmortgage borrowing, including student, credit card, auto, and home equity debts. For this purpose, we use CoreLogic geographic house price variation, matched with rich data on consumer liabilities from the Equifax-sourced FRBNY Consumer Credit Panel. The length and timing of our panel allow us to study the consumer debt portfolio response to house price changes during a boom-and-bust cycle of historic magnitude as well as during more ordinary times. In first-differenced instrumental variables estimation, we find that during ...
Staff Reports , Paper 617

Discussion Paper
Who Is Driving the Recent Decline in Consumers Inflation Expectations?
Armantier, Olivier; Zafar, Basit; Topa, Giorgio; Van der Klaauw, Wilbert (2016-01-05)
The expectations of U.S. consumers about inflation have declined to record lows over the past several months. That is the finding of two leading surveys, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE) and the University of Michigan’s Survey of Consumers (SoC). In this post, we examine whether this decline is broad-based or whether it is driven by specific demographic groups.
Liberty Street Economics , Paper 20160105

Report
Information and anti-American attitudes
Zafar, Basit; Delavande, Adeline (2012)
This paper investigates how attitudes toward the United States are affected by the provision of information. We generate a panel of attitudes in urban Pakistan, in which respondents are randomly exposed to fact-based statements describing the United States in either a positive or negative light. Anti-American sentiment is high and heterogenous in our sample at the baseline, and systematically correlated with intended behavior, such as intended migration. We find that revised attitudes are, on average, significantly different from baseline attitudes: attitudes are revised upward (downward) ...
Staff Reports , Paper 558

Discussion Paper
Introducing the FRBNY Survey of Consumer Expectations: Survey Goals, Design and Content
Armantier, Olivier; Zafar, Basit; Van der Klaauw, Wilbert; Topa, Giorgio (2013-12-04)
Starting in the first quarter of 2014, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) will begin reporting findings from a new national survey designed to elicit consumers? expectations for a wide range of household-level and aggregate economic and financial conditions. This week, we provide an introduction to the new survey in a series of four blog posts. In this first post, we discuss the overall objectives of the new survey, its sample design, and content. In the posts that follow, we will provide further details and present preliminary findings from the survey on three broad categories of ...
Liberty Street Economics , Paper 20131204b

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University choice: the role of expected earnings, non-pecuniary outcomes, and financial constraints
Zafar, Basit; Delavande, Adeline (2014-08-01)
We investigate the determinants of students? university choice, with a focus on expected monetary returns, non-pecuniary factors enjoyed at school, and financial constraints, in the Pakistani context. To mitigate the identification problem concerning the separation of preferences, expectations, and markets constraints, we combine rich data on individual-specific subjective expectations about labor market and non-pecuniary outcomes, with direct measures of financial constraints and students? stated school choice both with and without financial constraints. Estimates from a life-cycle model ...
Staff Reports , Paper 683

Report
Preference for the workplace, investment in human capital, and gender
Zafar, Basit; Wiswall, Matthew (2016-03-01)
We use a hypothetical choice methodology to estimate preferences for workplace attributes and quantify how much these preferences influence pre-labor-market human capital investments. This method robustly identifies preferences for various job attributes, free from omitted variable bias and free from considering the equilibrium job match. Women on average have a higher willingness to pay (WTP) for jobs with greater work flexibility and job stability, and men have a higher WTP for jobs with higher earnings growth. These job preferences relate to college major choices and actual job choices, ...
Staff Reports , Paper 767

Report
Belief updating among college students: evidence from experimental variation in information
Wiswall, Matthew; Zafar, Basit (2011)
We investigate how college students form and update their beliefs about future earnings using a unique ?information? experiment. We provide college students true information about the population distribution of earnings and observe how this information causes respondents to update their beliefs about their own future earnings. We show that college students are substantially misinformed about population earnings and logically revise their self-beliefs in response to the information we provide, with larger revisions when the information is more specific and is good news. We classify the ...
Staff Reports , Paper 516

Discussion Paper
Rising Household Debt: Increasing Demand or Increasing Supply?
Livingston, Max; Van der Klaauw, Wilbert; Zafar, Basit (2014-05-28)
Total consumer debt continued to increase in the first quarter of this year, marking the first time since the recession that aggregate debt had grown for three consecutive quarters, according to the May 2014 Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit. Is this increase in household debt driven by changes in supply or demand? The January 2014 and April 2014 Senior Loan Officer Opinion Surveys (SLOOS) show an increase in lenders? willingness to make consumer loans over the last several quarters and an increase in the number of lenders reporting looser lending standards, which indicates that ...
Liberty Street Economics , Paper 20140528

Report
How do college students form expectations?
Zafar, Basit (2009-07-01)
This paper focuses on how college students form expectations about various major-specific outcomes. For this purpose, I collect a panel data set of Northwestern University undergraduates that contains their subjective expectations about major-specific outcomes. Although students tend to be overconfident about their future academic performance, they revised their expectations in expected ways. The updating process is found to be consistent with a Bayesian learning model. I show that learning plays a role in the decision to switch majors, and that major-switchers respond to information from ...
Staff Reports , Paper 378

Report
College major choice and the gender gap
Zafar, Basit (2009)
Males and females are markedly different in their choice of college major. Two main reasons have been suggested for the gender gap: differences in innate abilities and differences in preferences. This paper addresses the question of how college majors are chosen, focusing on the underlying gender gap. Since observed choices may be consistent with many combinations of expectations and preferences, I use a unique data set of Northwestern University sophomores that contains the students' subjective expectations about choice-specific outcomes. I estimate a choice model where selection of college ...
Staff Reports , Paper 364

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