Consumer credit research

The Center has led a multi-year investigation of issues relating to consumer behavior and consumer credit. In its early years, the topics included analyses of credit availability, its impact on the economy, the causes and effects of personal bankruptcy, and the public policy implications of these issues. More recently, additional focus has been on consumer transactions behavior, transactions privacy issues, consumer credit risk assessment and modeling, and regulatory issues related to credit scoring. These efforts have culminated in a number of conferences, each of which has explored a subset of topics relating to consumer credit. The most recent of these conferences was co-sponsored with the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.