Household Credit Usage Personal Debt and Mortgages

The field of household finance seeks to understand how households use financial instruments. Financial economists have long studied how corporations utilize financial instruments, yet relatively little is understood about how individual consumers and households utilize various credit alternatives in managing their consumption and savings objectives. However, with the increasing interest in issues surrounding behavioral finance, research into household financial decision making processes is becoming increasingly important. In response to the growing interest in household finance, this book contains a collection of essays by leading researchers studying issues involving household and consumer use of credit instruments. This collection will provide readers with a greater understanding of what is currently known about household credit utilization and suggest possible areas for future research.

Sumit Agarwal, Ph.D.  is a financial economist in the research department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.  His research interests include issues relating to household finance, as well as corporate finance, financial institutions and capital markets.  His research has been published in the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Journal of Financial Intermediation, Journal of Housing Economics and Real Estate Economics.  Prior to joining the Chicago Fed in July 2006, Agarwal was a Senior Vice President and Credit Risk Management Executive in the Small Business Risk Solutions Group of Bank of America. He also served as an adjunct professor in the finance department at the George Washington University. Agarwal received a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
 
Brent W. Ambrose, Ph.D.  is the Jeffery L. and Cindy M. King Faculty Fellow in Business and Professor of Real Estate at the Pennsylvania State University.  Prior to joining Penn State University, Dr. Ambrose was the Director of the Center for Real Estate Studies and Professor of Finance at the University of Kentucky where he held the Kentucky Real Estate Professorship.  In addition, Dr. Ambrose was an Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where he directed the UWM real estate program and from 1997 to 1998 he was a Visiting Associate Professor and Research Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business. Dr. Ambrose served as the Executive Vice President of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association from 1996 to 2003 and in 2003 was elected a Fellow of the Weimer School of Advanced Studies in Real Estate and Land Economics at the Homer Hoyt Advanced Studies Institute. In 2004, he was elected a Fellow of the Real Estate Research Institute and in 2006 he was appointed a Fellow of the FDIC Center for Financial Research.  Currently, Dr. Ambrose serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, the Journal of Real Estate Research, and Real Estate Economics, and is a member of the board of directors for the Real Estate Research Institute and the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.