ECON4030 ECONOMICS OF HOUSEHOLD FINANCE
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ECON4030 ECONOMICS OF HOUSEHOLD FINANCE
SAMPLE PAPER 1
1. Show why liquidity constraints may be binding for some households but not for others. In practice which types of households face binding liquidity constraints?
2. Why might financial literacy arise endogenously with financial choices? How can instrumental variable strategies be used to control for this endogeneity problem?
3. Provide examples of simple ‘rule of thumb’ suggested in the recent literature. How large are the utility losses resulting from consumers using rules of thumb in financial decisions?
4. What are the implications of consumer ‘learning’ in financial markets for the rationality of consumer choices?
5. Why do ‘nudges’ affect consumer choices? Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using nudges to govern consumer behaviour.
6. Using examples from the mortgage market, discuss the challenges in measuring consumer inertia in mortgage choices.
7. How important are social and economic institutions, such as trust and insurance, for the decision to hold stocks?
8. What does the literature on the psychology of investor behaviour reveal about biases and mistakes in trading patterns?
SAMPLE PAPER 2
1. Why is consumption ‘hump-shaped’ over the life-cycle. Explain with reference to models of liquidity constraints and precautionary saving.
2. How should financial literacy be measured? Discuss the evidence for the roles of basic and advanced financial literacy in determining financial choices.
3. How do ‘rule of thumb’ for financial decisions differ from optimal rules? Are the costs of adopting rules of thumb instead of optimal rules large in practice?
4. Using examples from the credit card literature, discuss how researchers have measured learning in consumer behaviour.
5. Why might ‘nudges’ have unintended consequences for consumer outcomes?
6. Describe how richer financial data on mortgage choices allows researchers to obtain better estimates of consumer inertia in mortgage refinancing.
7. Why do so few consumers hold stocks?
8. Describe the main fallacies in individual investor behaviour identified in prior studies. What are the costs of sub-optimal investing in practice?
SAMPLE PAPER 3
1. Explain how the existence of liquidity constraints and precautionary saving can explain the hump-shaped profile of consumption over the life-cycle.
2. What is ‘financial literacy’? Describe how studies examine the relationship between financial literacy and financial outcomes and address the potential endogeneity of financial literacy
3. What evidence is there for consumers using rules-of-thumb in financial decisions? Discuss the implications of rule-of-thumb behaviour for market performance.
4. Using examples, describe recent studies that show consumer learning in financial markets. What does the evidence suggests about which consumers ‘learn’ most effectively?
5. What is ‘choice architecture’ and why does it matter for consumer decision making?
6. Discuss how consumer inertia in decision making can result in sub- optimal choices in financial markets.
7. Why do so few households participate in the stock market?
8. What are the common mistakes made by individual investors? What do these mistakes suggest about the psychology of individual investing?
2022-05-16