Consumer Finance

DP 25-02 – This paper describes methodological approaches for extracting structured data from historical documents. We show the benefits of an "adaptive modular" approach leveraging optical character recognition, full-text search, and frontier LLMs.

Recently, a variety of sources have presented evidence suggesting that U.S. consumers are experiencing a so-called K-shaped economy. In other words, different segments of consumers are encountering increasingly divergent trends. In most cases, these sources point to an apparent divergence in consumer spending growth between high- and low-income consumers.

WP 25-35 – Older home sellers receive lower returns than younger home sellers. Homes sold by older people have fewer major renovations but higher rates of poor upkeep. Older sellers are also more likely to sell off-MLS (“pocket listings”) and to sell to investors, leading to lower prices.

WP 24-10/R – The author studies how bankruptcy law firm advertisements affect household credit, exploiting the borders of local TV advertisement media markets.

WP 25-29 – We use extended fraud alerts in anonymized credit reports to examine how identity theft, and subsequent cleanup, affects consumers’ credit outcomes.