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Conference Paper
The macroeconomic transition to high household debt
Aggressive deregulation of the household debt market in the early 1980s triggered innovations that greatly reduced the required home equity of U.S. households, allowing them to cash-out a large part of accumulated equity. In 1982, home equity equaled 71 percent of GDP; so this generated a borrowing shock of huge macroeconomic proportions. The combination of increasing household debt from 43 to 56 percent of GDP with high interest rates during the 1982-1990 period is consistent with such a shock to households? demand for funds. This paper uses a quantitative general equilibrium model of ...
Discussion Paper
Payments, credit, and savings: the experience for LMI households
The Payment Cards Center and the Community Affairs Department invited Michael Barr, University of Michigan Law School and faculty investigator for the 2005-2006 Detroit Area Study (DAS), to collaborate in organizing a conference, ?Payments, Credit, and Savings: The Experience for LMI Households,? held May 21-22, 2007, at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. This year?s DAS survey was designed to gain a better understanding of 1) how and why LMI households use a wide array of financial services as well as the costs and benefits of such services and 2) how LMI households would respond to ...
Journal Article
Personal on-line payments
The swift growth of e-commerce and the Internet has led to the development of a new form of electronic funds transfer?the personal on-line payment?that uses web and e-mail technologies to initiate and confirm payments. This article describes this payment instrument and the trends that have given rise to it. The authors explain that personal on-line payment systems are already providing a convenient alternative to checks, money orders, and cash, and may replace credit cards for some small-scale retail e-commerce. However, issues such as the interoperability of diverse systems and the systems? ...
Journal Article
Helping the poor accumulate assets
Having assets (a bank account, a car, an insured home, a good credit rating) does more than help families weather a crisis. It can move them out of poverty permanently, with benefits to individuals, government, corporations, and society as a whole.
Journal Article
RAISE Texas: moving Texans towards financial success
What began several years ago as a network of matched savings programs to encourage low-income Texans to save has blossomed into a statewide, comprehensive asset-building movement now known as RAISE Texas.
Journal Article
Spotlight: Financial services: Banking within reach of more Mexicans
In 2008-09, Mexico was wracked by the global financial crisis, suffering its largest one-year economic contraction since at least the 1930s. But the banking sector withstood the shock and made important strides in one area--bringing previously unbanked households into the financial system. Boosting Mexico's economic development by helping small businesses fulfill their potential depends on improving access to finance and fully linking these engines of economic growth and opportunity to the formal economy.
Conference Paper
The macroeconomic transition to high household debt - comments
Working Paper
Your house or your credit card, which would you choose?: personal delinquency tradeoffs and precautionary liquidity motives
This paper finds strong evidence that many individuals choose to pay credit card bills even at the cost of mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures. While the popular press and some recent literature have suggested that this choice may emerge from steep declines in housing prices, we find evidence that individual-level liquidity concerns are at least as important in the decision. That is, choosing credit cards over housing suggests a precautionary liquidity preference. ; By linking the mortgage delinquency decisions to individual-level credit conditions, we are able to assess the compound ...