On May 10-11, the Becker Friedman Institute’s Consumer Finance Conference brought together micro- and macro-economists working in the field of consumer finance, with the goal of building bridges between researchers working on similar questions using different methodological approaches. Topics of interest included consumer borrowing (credit cards, payday loans, mortgages), savings and investment decisions, and personal bankruptcy, among others.

Agenda

Friday, May 10, 2019
08:30:00–09:00:00

Registration and Breakfast

Private Information and Credit Scoring

09:00:00–09:50:00

Private Information and Price Regulation in the US Credit Card Market

09:50:00–10:40:00

Employer Credit Checks: Poverty Traps versus Matching Efficiency

10:40:00–11:05:00

Break

Development

11:05:00–11:55:00

Financial Inclusion and Contract Terms: Experimental Evidence from Mexico

11:55:00–12:45:00

Financial Access Under the Microscope

12:45:00–14:00:00

Lunch

Mortgages

14:00:00–14:50:00

Why Do Borrowers Default on Mortgages? Evidence from High-Frequency Data

14:50:00–15:40:00

Mortgage Prepayment and Path-Dependent Effects of Monetary Policy

15:40:00–15:55:00

Break

Price Caps

15:55:00–16:45:00

Regulatory Intervention in Consumer Search Markets: The Case of Credit Cards

16:45:00

Adjourn for the day

Saturday, May 11, 2019
08:30:00–09:00:00

Registration and Breakfast

Consumption vs. Credit Smoothing

09:00:00–09:50:00

Can the Unemployed Borrow? Implications for Public Insurance

09:50:00–10:40:00

Credit Smoothing

10:40:00–00:00:00

Break

Defaults and the Business Cycle

11:05:00–11:55:00

Credit Supply and Housing Speculation

11:55:00–12:45:00

Consumer Bankruptcy as Aggregate Demand Management

12:45:00–14:00:00

Lunch

Credit Histories

14:00:00–14:50:00

Regulating Consumer Credit with Over-Optimistic Borrowers

14:50:00–15:40:00

The Equilibrium Effects of Information Deletion: Evidence from Consumer Credit Markets

15:40:00–15:55:00

Break

Credit Histories II

15:55:00–16:45:00

Building Credit History with Heterogeneously-Informed Lenders

16:45:00

Conference concludes