1. Financial Institution Behavior, Part I: Xavi Gine and Rafe Mazer pull together audit studies of banks conducted in Ghana, Mexico and Peru. You will be shocked, shocked to discover gambling--I mean, failure to disclose true product costs or best-fit and cheapest products--in these establishments.
2. Financial Institution Behavior, Part II: The recovery in home prices in the United States since the housing bubble has left one part of the market untouched: homes with values below $100,000. Banks won't originate loans for mortgages of this size because the fees they can charge are capped below profitable levels, so owners can't refinance or sell. There is a non-profit turned hedge fund that's taking on this market though.
3. Financial Institution Behavior, Part III: OK, so they're not financial institutions, but debt collectors are part of the financial infrastructure. And they've behaved so badly--harassing debtors, pursuing people who don't actually owe the debt, etc.--that they generate more complaints to the CFPB than even payday lenders or frauds. So the CFPB is drafting new rules to govern debt collection.
4. Hope, Aspirations and Poverty: Travis Lybbert and Bruce Wydick have a new paper providing a framework for empirical and experimental work on the role of hope and aspirations in development interventions. They have some preliminary tests of what happens when a microfinance institution tries to raise hope and aspirations of clients. Hey, this one's about financial institution behavior too!
5. Research and Fear: Barbara Magnoni wonders about the ways researchers and product designers and testers convene focus groups and conduct research, and suggests the need for more guidelines on how to convene people respectfully, recognizing power dynamics and cultural context--and not scare them. Whaddaya know, turns out this is about financial institution behavior too.
Speaking of hope, here's a video of Esther Duflo's talk on hope and aspirations (from 2013) at the Stanford Center for Ethics in Society.
