Is financial literacy a substitute or complement for financial advice? In this paper we analyze the decision by consumers to seek financial advice in the form of credit counseling concerning their credit and debt. Credit counseling is an important component of the consumer credit sector for...

Choosing a mortgage is one of the most important financial decisions made by a household. Financial innovation has given rise to more complex mortgage products with back-loaded payments, known as 'Alternative Mortgage Products' (AMPs), or 'nterest-Only Mortgages'. Using a specially designed...

Policymakers have expressed concern that some mortgage holders do not understand or correctly choose their mortgage products, especially alternative mortgage products (AMPs) with back-loaded payments. Using a specially design question module in a UK survey, we investigate the impact of consumer...

The disposition effect is the reluctance to sell assets at a loss relative to a salient point of reference, typically assumed to be the purchase price. Using data on stocks and housing sales, we show that the peak price achieved by an asset during the investor's period of holding constitutes an...

Innovation in financial technology has granted consumers increased access to faster, more convenient payment services. This development has, however, also given rise to Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud, where consumers are unwittingly manipulated into authorising transactions to counterfeit...

Attention utility is the hedonic pleasure or pain derived purely from paying attention to information. Using data on brokerage account logins by individual investors, we show that individuals devote disproportionate attention to already-known positive information about the performance of...