Three Essays in Consumer Finance

Three Essays in Consumer Finance PDF Author: Hyounjin Yi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description
Abstract: My dissertation consists of three essays. The first essay examines the relationship between household debt and consumption growth. I construct a household Debt Index based on nationally representative household level data. The Debt Index consists of four components which include debt-income ratio, debt-asset ratio, number of missed payments and required monthly payment-income ratio. I test whether the Debt Index has predictive power for consumption growth and find that it does not show predictive power. The second essay investigates the choice of payment method. Since credit card debt comes with a high interest rate, those who carry revolving credit on their credit cards face higher costs when they pay with a credit card than when they pay using other payment methods. This essay examines whether or not cash, check, and debit card use correlate with interest rates on credit cards applied to credit card revolvers. The findings indicate that among three non-credit card payment methods, only check use shows positive correlation, while cash and debit card use do not show any correlation with the interest rates on credit cards. This can be interpreted to mean that check users are more sensitive to pecuniary costs in payment than cash and debit card users. The last essay considers how education loans impact the early labor market behavior. Among several aspects of early labor market behavior, I investigate two issues. First, I investigate the transition time from school to work of young college graduates. Estimation results from Cox proportional hazard model show that those who have positive amounts of education loan take less transition time from school to work than those who do not have an education loan. When I examine the impact of an education loan on each gender, both genders show shorter transition time from college to work if they carry an education loan. However, the magnitude of the impact of an education loan on the transition time to one's first job shows a gender difference. For women, the difference in the time-to-first-job between those who have a positive amount of education loan and those who do not have an education loan is large. The difference in the time-to-first-job between people with an education loan and people without one is also observed in men, although the difference is smaller than that in women. Second, I examine the impact of educational loans on the tenure of the first job of college graduates. Using the survival analysis method, I find that the impact of education loans on the tenure of one's first job shows gender difference. Female workers with a positive amount of education loans show shorter tenure than female workers without education loans. Contrary to female workers, male workers do not show any difference in their tenure at their first job by education loans.

Three Essays in Consumer Finance

Three Essays in Consumer Finance PDF Author: Hyounjin Yi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description
Abstract: My dissertation consists of three essays. The first essay examines the relationship between household debt and consumption growth. I construct a household Debt Index based on nationally representative household level data. The Debt Index consists of four components which include debt-income ratio, debt-asset ratio, number of missed payments and required monthly payment-income ratio. I test whether the Debt Index has predictive power for consumption growth and find that it does not show predictive power. The second essay investigates the choice of payment method. Since credit card debt comes with a high interest rate, those who carry revolving credit on their credit cards face higher costs when they pay with a credit card than when they pay using other payment methods. This essay examines whether or not cash, check, and debit card use correlate with interest rates on credit cards applied to credit card revolvers. The findings indicate that among three non-credit card payment methods, only check use shows positive correlation, while cash and debit card use do not show any correlation with the interest rates on credit cards. This can be interpreted to mean that check users are more sensitive to pecuniary costs in payment than cash and debit card users. The last essay considers how education loans impact the early labor market behavior. Among several aspects of early labor market behavior, I investigate two issues. First, I investigate the transition time from school to work of young college graduates. Estimation results from Cox proportional hazard model show that those who have positive amounts of education loan take less transition time from school to work than those who do not have an education loan. When I examine the impact of an education loan on each gender, both genders show shorter transition time from college to work if they carry an education loan. However, the magnitude of the impact of an education loan on the transition time to one's first job shows a gender difference. For women, the difference in the time-to-first-job between those who have a positive amount of education loan and those who do not have an education loan is large. The difference in the time-to-first-job between people with an education loan and people without one is also observed in men, although the difference is smaller than that in women. Second, I examine the impact of educational loans on the tenure of the first job of college graduates. Using the survival analysis method, I find that the impact of education loans on the tenure of one's first job shows gender difference. Female workers with a positive amount of education loans show shorter tenure than female workers without education loans. Contrary to female workers, male workers do not show any difference in their tenure at their first job by education loans.

Three Essays on Consumer Finance

Three Essays on Consumer Finance PDF Author: Manisha Padi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 128

Get Book Here

Book Description
This thesis consists of three chapters on consumer financial contracts. Particularly, this thesis focuses on the regulation and design of markets for financial contracts, and their impact on household financial health. The first chapter studies the role of consumer protection law in the function of mortgage markets in the United States. Consumer protection laws are intended to improve consumer outcomes and are becoming more common, particularly in mortgage markets after the 2008 recession. Little empirical evidence exists about the benefits of these laws to consumer outcomes, relative to the potential compliance costs. This chapter studies the effect of two common types of consumer protection laws: seller standards of conduct, enforced through ex post lawsuits by prosecutors and consumers, and mandated disclosures, which require sellers to provide consumers with information to help them make better decisions. Using a natural experiment in Ohio, which introduced the Homebuyer's Protection Act in 2007, 1 study the impact of both seller standards of conduct and mandated disclosures on the performance of loans owned by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac between 2002 and 2012. I find that imposing standards of conduct on lenders increases borrower defaults in the short term, and is correlated with a drop in foreclosures and fewer mortgage originations. Mandated disclosures decrease mortgage defaults in the short term, and the effect is correlated with smaller transactions, lower interest rates, and higher borrower credit scores. I introduce a simple model of strategic default showing that standards of conduct targeting lenders can provide incentives to lenders to be lenient towards all borrowers, increase borrower default, while mandated disclosure can induce behaviorally biased consumers to default less often. Taken together, the evidence suggests that seller standards of conduct result in lender lenience towards borrowers but operate by shifting the cost of dropping house prices from borrowers onto lenders. On the other hand, carefully designed disclosures can encourage consumers to be more responsible in repayment of loans and can decrease the overall impact of unexpected drops in house prices. The second chapter studies the impact of defined benefit pensions on retirees' consumption patterns. It is authored jointly with Professor Jerry Hausman. Retirees discontinuously decrease their consumption spending upon retirement, a phenomenon described as the retirement consumption puzzle. This chapter studies the impact of defined benefit pensions on the retirement consumption puzzle. Data from the Health and Retirement Survey shows that households with defined benefit pensions experience a significantly smaller drop in consumption spending at retirement. The difference in consumption patterns between households with defined benefit and defined contribution pensions is consistent with a drop in price of home production after retirement. Defined benefit pensions allow households to exert less effort in home production, as well as decreasing the need for precautionary savings, meaning their value is understated if home production is not accounted for. Using HRS data, we estimate the utility value of defined benefit pensions, incorporating both home production and precautionary savings. The results imply that current methods of valuing retirement income products, such as employer provided pensions and private annuities, are biased downward. The third chapter studies the purchase of annuities by retirees in Chile's privatized social security system. It is authored jointly with Gaston Illanes, of Northwestern University Department of Economics. Chile has one of the highest voluntary annuitization rates in the world, with more than 60% of retirees purchasing a private annuity. In contrast, less than 5% of US retirees purchase annuities, despite theoretical predictions that annuity value is high. Annuities in Chile are sold through a unique government-run exchange which decrease search costs and intensifies competition without imposing costs on firms. Chile also has a privatized social security system in which retirees that do not buy an annuity must take a "programmed withdrawal" of their mandated retirement savings that exposes them to more stock market risk than Social Security would. Using novel individual level administrative data and theoretical calibrations, we provide evidence that the high annuitization rate is driven by Chile's unique regulatory regime, rather than by the risk of programmed withdrawal in a privatized system. We document several features of the annuity exchange in Chile. First, annuity prices are low compared to the worldwide average. Second, annuity providers have significant market power. Third, selection exists in the market, both into purchase of annuities, and into searching for better prices. Based on these facts, we calibrate a insurance value of full annuitization compared to the privatized alternative offered by the Chilean government and compare to the value of full annuitization compared to public Social Security, such as that found in the US. The calibration suggests that privatization of social security alone cannot explain the high level of annuitization in Chile. Regulations limiting search costs can cause low prices, lower levels of adverse selection, and high brand preferences that together can explain the high annuitization rate.

Three Essays on Household Finance

Three Essays on Household Finance PDF Author: Alexander Calen Aberlin Kaufman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Get Book Here

Book Description
This dissertation presents three essays on household finance. All three focus on contemporary U.S. consumer credit markets, with particular attention paid to how market organization and firm incentives mediate the way firms interact with customers and the types of contracts they offer. The first essay examines the question of whether securitization was responsible for poor underwriting standards during the recent mortgage crisis. The second essay attempts to quantify the effect of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's intervention in the conforming mortgage market on equilibrium outcomes such as price and contract structure. The third essay investigates how mutual ownership of a firm by its customers can limit that firm's incentive to offer contracts meant to take advantage of customers' behavioral biases.

Three Essays on Rational Consumer Behavior

Three Essays on Rational Consumer Behavior PDF Author: David Yong Shim
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Consumers
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Get Book Here

Book Description


Three essays on consumer credit history and the labor market

Three essays on consumer credit history and the labor market PDF Author: Tess Forsell
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description


Essays in Consumer Finance

Essays in Consumer Finance PDF Author: Susan Payne Carter
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bankruptcy
Languages : en
Pages : 116

Get Book Here

Book Description


Essays on Consumer Finance

Essays on Consumer Finance PDF Author: Brian T. Melzer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Consumer credit
Languages : en
Pages : 174

Get Book Here

Book Description


Three essays on real estate finance

Three essays on real estate finance PDF Author: Xiaolong Liu
Publisher: Rozenberg Publishers
ISBN: 9036101999
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 132

Get Book Here

Book Description


Three Essays in Macroeconomics and Finance

Three Essays in Macroeconomics and Finance PDF Author: David Henry Bowman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 230

Get Book Here

Book Description


Three Essays on Household Finance

Three Essays on Household Finance PDF Author: Arpit Gupta
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description
This dissertation centers on the role of adverse shocks to household balance sheets in understanding consumer default behavior. The first chapter studies the role of foreclosure contagion: the role of proximate foreclosures in causally triggering other nearby residential defaults and foreclosures. I find that foreclosure activity causally increases nearby rates of consumer defaults. This paper uses an instrument further examined in the second essay which analyzes the role for adverse selection and moral hazard in mortgage markets; using as a distinction the initial and post-reset interest rates paid on Adjustable-Rate Mortgage contracts. The final essay analyzes the role for cancer diagnosis shocks on household default behavior.