The NBER working group on Household Finance is organizing a one-day
meeting during the Summer Institute, on Thursday, July 22nd, in Cambridge MA.
The purpose of this working group is to provide a single, regular forum
that brings together the various researchers of household finance topics,
in order to advance our understanding of them. 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. Topics of interest to
the working group include, but are not limited to:
* Household borrowing decisions, including decisions about debt in
general and also specific types of credit, such as mortgages, credit cards,
student loans, informal lending, peer to peer lending, etc.
* Household saving and investing/portfolio-choice decisions,
including 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
* Insurance and other forms of 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.
If you are interested in presenting a paper, please upload a .pdf file
using the following website, no later than April 4th, 2010 (We prefer
completed drafts, but abstracts will also be considered.):
http://www.nber.org/confsubmit/backend/cfp?id=SI0hf
The NBER will fund travel expenses for paper presenters and discussants.
We can also fund travel expenses for a few select doctoral students at
advanced stages of research on household finance topics. If you have a
student who would benefit from attending this conference, please email the
following to Rob Shannon at rshannon_at_nber.org: the student's C.V., a draft
or summary of his/her main project in this area, and a one-page letter of
recommendation.
Please note that submitters will hear from the NBER only if your paper can
be included in the program. Also, if your paper is accepted by both this
group and another group during the same week of the Summer Institute, we
may ask that your paper be withdrawn from one of the groups, to make room
for more participants.
If you have any administrative questions, please contact Rob Shannon at
rshannon_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 July in Cambridge. Thank you.
Brigitte Madrian, Harvard Kennedy School
(<mailto:brigitte_madrian_at_harvard.edu>brigitte_madrian_at_harvard.edu)
Nicholas Souleles, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
(<mailto:souleles_at_wharton.upenn.edu>souleles_at_wharton.upenn.edu)
Peter Tufano, Harvard Business School (<mailto:ptufano_at_hbs.edu>ptufano_at_hbs.edu)
Received on Mon Mar 01 2010 - 11:44:17 EST
