CALL FOR PAPERS
NBER WORKING GROUP ON HOUSEHOLD FINANCE
Nick Souleles and Peter Tufano, Organizers
OCTOBER 16, 2009
This fall, the NBER will launch a new working group on Household
Finance, with the inaugural meeting to be held on October 16, 2009 in
Cambridge. Recent events have reminded us of the economic
importance of household finance not only to families, but also to
businesses and to the macro-economy. While household finance topics
can arise in a number of fields in economics, the purpose of this
working group is to provide a single, regular forum that brings
together the various researchers of these topics, in order to advance
our understanding of them. We hope that sustained attention to these
topics will not only advance our understanding of this important
sector, but also improve its workings by informing the actions of
consumers, businesses, and policymakers.
We define household finance broadly, to include the many financial
decisions made by households, including the financial functions of
payments, saving and investing/portfolio-choice, borrowing/credit,
and risk management. Households do not make their decisions in a
vacuum, and so the field also encompasses the actions of businesses
and government. For example, one could study how consumers make
decisions about a particular type of financial product; the economics
of that product from the vantage point of a financial services firm;
and the impact of regulations on that product.
To illustrate, topics of interest to the working group include, but
are not limited to:
* Household borrowing decisions, including decisions regarding
both debt in general and also particular important types of credit,
such as mortgages, credit cards, student loans, informal lending,
peer to peer lending, etc.
* Household saving and investing/portfolio-choice decisions,
regarding both financial investments (ranging from short-term
emergency savings to long-term retirement savings), and real
investments (such as in housing and human capital)
* Household payment choices
* Household consumption, spending and budgeting
* Consumer default and bankruptcy
* Household risk management
* Financial skills and capabilities
* The economics of consumer finance organizations
* Financial innovations in household finance
* Laws, regulations, and public policies about consumer finance
The working group is interested in a wide variety of research
approaches, including empirical studies of existing or new datasets,
laboratory or field experiments, theoretical modeling, clinical
research, etc.
Our first meeting will be a one-day session in Cambridge on October
16, 2009. The NBER will fund travel expenses for paper presenters
and discussants.
<mailto:>If you are interested in presenting a paper, please upload a
pdf file using the following website, no later than August 10, 2009
(Early stage work will also be considered.):
http://www.nber.org/confsubmit/backend/cfp?id=HFf09 .
If you have any administrative questions, please contact
confer_at_nber.org. Other questions can be directed to us.
Please share this call for papers with other researchers on the
topic, as participation is not limited to NBER affiliates.
We hope to see you in October in Cambridge. Thank you.
Nick Souleles, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
(souleles_at_wharton.upenn.edu)
Peter Tufano, Harvard Business School (ptufano_at_hbs.edu)
Received on Mon Jun 15 2009 - 12:09:58 EDT
