|
|
|
|
|
Dear Researchers,
This is the fourth annual newsletter of the CEPR Network on Household Finance. This network, led by Michael Haliassos of Goethe University Frankfurt, aims to promote research on household financial behaviour that is both scientifically excellent and relevant to policymakers, regulators, and market participants. It does so through the organisation of specialised scientific conferences and workshops, as well as events bringing together academics, practitioners, policy makers and regulators; the promotion of young researchers; the dissemination of household finance research; the fruitful interaction with policy makers and industry partners in relevant research; the promotion of innovative research methods; and the creation and interlinking of high-quality micro-datasets of financial behaviour based on survey or administrative collection methods.
For continued updates on the network’s activities, please refer to the dedicated page on CEPR’s website, which can be found here.
|
|
Events
Future events
Fifth European Workshop on Household Finance/ 7-9 May 2020: Now scheduled online!
The CEPR Network on Household Finance and the Swedish House of Finance are organising the Fifth European Household Finance Workshop on 7-9 May 2020 with the support of the Think Forward Initiative (TFI) and EIEF. The objective of this workshop is to host presentations and foster interaction between Senior and Junior Researchers working in the area of household finance.
In view of the coronavirus restrictions on movement and direct interaction currently in place, we have decided to host the conference remotely in three 2-hour sessions that will take place on May 7, 8, and 9 in the afternoon (CET), so that they can also be joined by researchers in the US. Information on how to register as a speaker or participant will be made available on the CEPR HF Network website as soon as they are finalized.
In addition to the research workshop, we will also host an online CEPR-TFI event on “Household Welfare: Do we need big data?”, organised by Paolo Sodini (Stockholm School of Economics and SHoF) on Thursday, 7 May. The event features as speakers
- John Y. Campbell, Professor (Harvard University)
- Martin Flodén, Deputy Governor (Sveriges Riksbank, Stockholm University and CEPR)
- Shiler Khedri, Global Head of Data and Technology at ING Analytics
- Gianluca Violante, Professor (Princeton University)
and includes a panel discussion chaired by Karolina Ekholm, (Stockholm University).
Please check the event webpage for more information.
The Network will be organising the next CEPR European Conference in Household Finance in Olso, Norway on 10-12 September 2020, combined with a TFI-CEPR event (tentative topic: “Climate Change: Implications for Household Finance”). Stay tuned for updates.
Importantly, the conference will include the now annual competition for a PhD student Prize. The prize is sponsored by TFI and is awarded by the CEPR Network to the best conference paper authored only by PhD students.
Recent past events
The 2019 European Conference on Household Finance took place in Rhodes, Greece, at Rhodos Palace Hotel on the 19-21 September 2019. Twelve papers were presented within six sessions. The local organisers were Alex Michaelides and Michael Haliassos. The main topics included product design and household behaviour, house prices and household wealth, stock market, monetary policy and household consumption, household debt and technology and intra-household asset allocation and insurance.
Additionally, a poster session was organised by the Greek think tank diaNEOsis, providing useful background and research results on aspects of the Greek economy and the fiscal crisis, as it affected households.
The former Greek Minister of Finance, Gikas Hardouvelis, (University of Piraeus and CEPR) gave a compelling speech during the first day of the conference, on past record and future prospects for Greece.
On the 19 September, a joint CEPR-TFI event took place in Rhodes, organised by Andreas Fuster (Swiss National Bank and CEPR) and Amit Seru (Stanford University and CEPR) with the collaboration of Tarun Ramadorai (Imperial College Business School and CEPR).
The theme was “Fintech and Bigtech”. Among the invited speakers were Leonardo Gambacorta, Head of Innovation and the Digital Economy (BIS and CEPR), Devie Mohan, Co-founder and CEO (Burnmark) and Tommaso Valletti, Professor of Economics (Imperial College London and CEPR).
The Fourth European Workshop on Household Finance took place in Lund, Sweden, at Skissernas Museum on 10-11 May 2019. The event included four sessions and twelve papers. Several topics relevant to household finance were discussed: distribution, inequality and dispersion of household wealth; individual investor behaviour; mortgage choices and mortgage prices; household debt; response to unemployment shocks and retirement savings. The local organisers of the event were Kaveh Majlesi and Paolo Sodini.
More details are available on the event webpage.
Preceding the workshop, a CEPR-TFI event took place on 9 May 2019: Fairness in Consumer Credit Markets. Stefania Albanesi (University of Pittsburgh), in collaboration with Tarun Ramadorai (Imperial College Business School), put together the event, which was live-streamed. The invited speakers included Jan Dodion (ING), Brian Bucks (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) and Chuck Robida (Experian).
The presentation slides of the lecturers are available on the webpage of the event.
|
|
|
The CEPR Network PhD Student Prize
The best PhD student prize is awarded by the CEPR network and sponsored by TFI. We now have a list of impressive and highly promising young economists who have received the Network Prize:
- The prize for the Lund Workshop in 2019 was awarded to Erkki Vihriälä, DPhil student at the University of Oxford, for his paper “Untangling the credit card debt puzzle - persistence, reaction to cheap liquidity and intra-household optimization”.
- The prize for the 2019 Rhodes Conference was awarded to Rory McGee (UCL) for his paper “Savings after Retirement: Homeownership, Preferences or Risks?”
- The first CEPR-TFI prize winner, Matteo Benetton of the London School of Economics, was given the prize for the Copenhagen workshop in 2017 and is now an assistant professor at Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkеley.
- Julio Galvez of CEMFI, currently research economist at the Bank of Spain, was awarded the prize for the 2017 Conference in Sardinia.
- Stephanie Johnson of Northwestern University, currently assistant professor at Rice University, received the prize for the London Workshop in 2018.
- The recipient of the Prize at the 2018 Conference in Sicily, Claudia Robles-Garcia of the London School of Economics, has been appointed Assistant Professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business.
It has been decided that, from 2020 onwards, the prize will be awarded annually at the CEPR Conference on Household Finance in the Fall.
|
|
A New Institution: The Household Finance Network Members
Our Network has pioneered the appointment of “Network Members” to recognize consistent involvement in its activities over time, and to reflect the rapidly increasing, gender-balanced involvement of younger researchers in household finance research.
In 2019, the Network appointed the following Network Members for the period 2019-2021.
Marieke Bos (Stockholm School of Economics and SHoF )
John Gathergood (University of Nottingham)
Samuli Knüpfer (BI Norwegian Business School)
Soren Leth-Petersen (Copenhagen University)
Kaveh Majlesi (Lund University)
Arna Olafsson (Copenhagen Business School)
Michaela Pagel (Columbia University)
Kim Peijnenburg (EDHEC Business School)
Raman Uppal (EDHEC Business School)
Stephen Zeldes (Columbia University)
We are looking forward to their close involvement and continued participation in network activities over the next two years.
|
|
Think Forward Initiative
The cooperation between the CEPR Network on Household Finance and the TFI continued in 2019 and extended well beyond the PhD student prize. Michael Haliassos serves as member of the Research Board of TFI, and several Network members provide academic input to the TFI research board and initiatives during the year.
In 2019, the TFI awarded funding to short-term and long-term research projects that provide relevant impact-driven insights in the domains of people’s (financial) decision-making, financial health, and financial well-being. The Network members were actively involved in the selection of the winning proposals. A list of current TFI projects is available here.
CEPR and TFI also organised joint events, typically on the day prior to the academic CEPR event, bringing together academics, practitioners, regulators and policy-makers in the field of finance and fintech. These events put special emphasis on empowering households in their financial decisions, consistent with the TFI mission.
|
|
Other relevant events
The CEPR Network collaborates informally with the NBER group on Household Finance, given our common academic interests and long-lasting professional relationships between members of the two groups.
In this context, we would like to inform our readers that the NBER working group on Household Finance is organizing a meeting during the Summer Institute on Friday and Saturday, July 17 and 18, 2020, in Cambridge MA. The meeting will be co-organized by Adair Morse (UC Berkeley and NBER), Johannes Stroebel (New York University and NBER), and Stephen Zeldes (Columbia University and NBER). More information is available here.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
