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Historically, European Jews have specialized in financial services while being the victims of antisemitism. We find that the present-day demand for finance is lower in German counties where historical antisemitism was higher, compared to otherwise similar counties. Households in counties with high historical antisemitism have similar saving rates but invest less in stocks, hold lower saving deposits, and are less likely to get a mortgage to finance homeownership after controlling for wealth and a rich set of current and historical covariates. Present-day antisemitism and supply-side forces do not fully explain the results. Households in counties where historical antisemitism was higher distrust the financial sector more—a potential cultural externality of historical antisemitism that reduces wealth accumulation in the long run.

We study the introduction of a wealth-management robo-adviser that constructs portfolios tailored to investors’ holdings and preferences. Adopters are similar to non-adopters in terms of demographics and prior interactions with human advisers but tend to be more active and have greater assets under management. Investors adopting robo-advising experience diversification benefits. Ex ante undiversified investors increase stock holdings and hold portfolios with less volatility and better returns. Already well-diversified investors hold fewer stocks, yet see some reduction in volatility, and trade more after adoption. All investors increase attention based on online account logins. We find that adopters exhibit declines in prominent behavioral biases, including the disposition, trend chasing, and rank effect. Our results emphasize the promises and pitfalls of robo-advising tools, which are becoming ubiquitous all over the world.

Households’ and firms’ subjective inflation expectations play a central role in macroeconomic and intertemporal microeconomic models. We discuss how subjective inflation expectations are measured, the patterns they display, their determinants, and how they shape households’ and firms’ economic choices in the data and help us make sense of the observed heterogeneous reactions to business-cycle shocks and policy interventions. We conclude by highlighting the relevant open questions and why tackling them is important for academic research and policymaking.

Expectations about economic variables vary systematically across genders. In the domain of inflation, women have persistently higher expectations than men. We argue that traditional gender roles are a significant factor in generating this gender expectations gap as they expose women and men to different economic signals in their daily lives. Using unique data on the participation of men and women in household grocery chores, their resulting exposure to price signals, and their inflation expectations, we document a tight link between the gender expectations gap and the distribution of grocery shopping duties. Because grocery prices are highly volatile, and consumers focus disproportionally on positive price changes, frequent exposure to grocery prices increases perceptions of current inflation and expectations of future inflation. The gender expectations gap is largest in households whose female heads are solely responsible for grocery shopping, whereas no gap arises in households that split grocery chores equally between men and women. Our results indicate that gender differences in inflation expectations arise due to social conditioning rather than through differences in innate abilities, skills, or preferences.

We document four secular trends about U.S. mortgage origination by traditional and FinTech lenders after the 2008-2009 financial crisis. First, since 2011, the overall number, size, and approval rate of small and medium-sized loans have been decreasing over time, relative to large loans. Second, the largest lenders redistribute their lending the most. Third, this loan-size redistribution of credit increases in the size of the lender. Fourth, the effects are stronger for mortgages further away from the conforming loan limit(s) in both directions. We argue that the supply of credit drives these secular trends, and we assess several potential economic mechanisms.

Unconventional fiscal policy uses announcements of future increases in consumption taxes to generate inflation expectations and accelerate consumption expenditure. It is budget neutral and time consistent. We provide preliminary evidence for the effectiveness of such policies using changes in value-added tax (VAT) and household survey data for Poland. We find households increased their inflation expectations and willingness to purchase durables before the increase in VAT. Future research has to ensure income, wealth effects, or intratemporal substitution channels cannot explain these results and ideally exploit exogenous variation in VAT in a fixed nominal interest rate environment.

Cognitive abilities help explain the large cross-sectional variation in inflation expectations at the household level. But which type of cognitive abilities are important? We find that not only quantitative abilities but also logical and verbal abilities are important to explain the accuracy and plausibility of households' inflation expectations. We discuss the channels through which different forms of cognition might shape households' abilities to forecast future macroeconomic variables. We also draw implications for the effectiveness of policies that aim to manage households' expectations.

We consider the long-lived slant towards Berlusconi in political information on Italian television (TV). We exploit a shock to the slanted exposure of viewers: idiosyncratic deadlines to switch to digital TV from 2008 to 2012, which increased the number of freeview channels tenfold. The switch caused a drop in the vote share of Berlusconi's coalition by between 5.5 and 7.5 percentage points. The effect was stronger in towns with older and less educated voters. At least 20 percent of digital users changed their voting behavior after the introduction of digital TV. Our evidence is consistent with the existence of persuasion-biased viewers.

Die Bekämpfung der Folgen des Klimawandels erzeugt erhebliche fiskalische Kosten, aber wie sollen diese Ausgaben finanziert werden? In einem aktuellen Forschungspapier befragen wir deutsche Haushalte nach deren Präferenzen und Einstellungen zu verschiedenen Instrumenten für die Finanzierung von Klimaschutzmaßnahmen. Unsere Ergebnisse deuten an, dass die deutsche Bevölkerung steuerfinanzierte Lösungen - wie etwa eine Erhöhung des Spitzensteuersatzes oder eine CO2-Umsatzsteuer - präferiert, während höhere Staatsschulden und private Versicherungen wenig beliebt sind. Zudem zeigen wir, dass sich die Finanzierungspräferenzen von Verbraucher*innen durch die (zufällige) Bereitstellung von Informationen zu den Verursacher*innen bzw. Profiteur*innen des Klimawandels beeinflussen lassen. Allerdings weichen die Einstellungen der Bevölkerung von ökonomischen Effizienzkriterien oftmals ab. Stattdessen spielt die wahrgenommene Fairness von Finanzierungsinstrumenten eine wichtige Rolle.

Increasing the diversity of policy committees has taken center stage worldwide, but whether and why diverse committees are more effective is still unclear. In a randomized control trial that varies the salience of female and minority representation on the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy committee, the FOMC, we test whether diversity affects how Fed information influences consumers’ subjective beliefs. Women and Black respondents form unemployment expectations more in line with FOMC forecasts and trust the Fed more after this intervention. Women are also more likely to acquire Fed-related information when associated with a female official. White men, who are overrepresented on the FOMC, do not react negatively. Heterogeneous taste for diversity can explain these patterns better than homophily. Our results suggest more diverse policy committees are better able to reach underrepresented groups without inducing negative reactions by others, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of policy communication and public trust in the institution.