Search Results
Periodic Essay
Still digging out: real net worth per household has rebounded 63 percent since hitting bottom in early 2009
Short essays related to research on understanding and strengthening the balance sheets of American households.
Speech
The recovery and monetary policy
Remarks at the National Association for Business Economics Annual Meeting, New York City.
Working Paper
Cognitive abilities and household financial decision making
We analyze the effects of cognitive abilities on two examples of consumer financial decisions where suboptimal behavior is well defined. The first example refers to consumers who transfer the entire balance from an existing credit card account to a new account, but use the new card for convenience transactions, resulting in higher interest charges. The second example refers to consumers who face higher APRs because they inaccurately estimate their property value on a home equity loan or line of credit application. We match individuals from the US military for whom we have detailed test scores ...
Journal Article
The relationship between leverage and household spending behavior: evidence from the 2007-2009 survey of consumer finances
Some recent studies suggest that high levels of household debt and leverage have contributed to the relatively sluggish growth of consumer spending in the past few years (Dynan, 2012; Mian, Rao, and Sufi, 2013). However, this conclusion has not been widely accepted because of the empirical challenges associated with identifying the relationship amid the dramatic and complicated changes in the household economic environment during the Great Recession and subsequent slow recovery. Leverage may indirectly influence spending by increasing borrowing constraints, impeding refinancing, and raising ...
Working Paper
The effect of sales tax holidays on household consumption patterns
Sales tax holidays (STHs) are the temporary suspension of state (and some local) sales taxes on selected retail items for a brief period of time. The policy has gained popularity in recent years, beginning in one state in 1997 and growing to twenty by 2008. Despite the increased frequency with which states use STHs, little research has been conducted to study how households respond to this temporary tax manipulation. Our paper offers the first household-level, microeconometric evaluation on the effect of STHs on household consumption patterns. We find that on STHs, households increase the ...
Report
After the fall : rebuilding family balance sheets, rebuilding the economy
Essay from the 2012 Annual Report.
Working Paper
Tobin lives: integrating evolving credit market architecture into flow of funds based macro-models
After the global financial crisis, there is greater awareness of the need to understand the interactions between the financial sector and the real economy and hence the potential for financial instability. Data from the financial flow of funds, previously relatively neglected, are now seen as crucial to the data monitoring carried out by central banks. This paper revisits earlier efforts to understand financial-real linkages, such those of Tobin and the Yale School, and proposes a modeling framework for analysing the household flow of funds jointly with consumption. The consumption function ...
Periodic Essay
The nation's wealth recovery since 2009 conceals vastly different balance-sheet realities among America's families
Short essays related to research on understanding and strengthening the balance sheets of American households.
Journal Article
The diverse impacts of the great recession
The Great Recession had a large negative impact on the U.S. economy. Asset prices, most notably stock and house prices, declined substantially, resulting in a loss in wealth for many American households. In this article, Makoto Nakajima documents how diverse households were affected in a variety of dimensions during the Great Recession, in particular between 2007 and 2009, using newly available data from the 2007-2009 Survey of Consumer Finances. He discusses why it is important to look at the data on households, rather than focusing on the aggregate data, and he reviews some recent studies ...
Newsletter
A new trend for U.S. household spending
Holiday sales are expected to be weak again this year even though the economy and financial markets are improving. Shoppers are especially reluctant to use credit cards for holiday purchases. According to the National Retail Federation's 2009 Consumer Intentions and Action Survey, only 28.3 percent of holiday shoppers will use credit cards; this is 10.6 percent lower than one year ago. Why are shoppers so hesitant to use their credit cards this year? Many factors are involved. Read the January 2010 Newsletter for the answers.