More About Our Topic
In this talk, Christopher will present his academic research on household decision making. He will focus on two recent projects and provide practical takeaways, as well as highlights of current academic research. The first project uses data on millions of car loans from a Utah startup that collects and manages data from hundreds of credit unions across the country to study how people make high-stakes decisions about debt. The second project involves a randomized-controlled trial he helped design and analyze using Gates Foundation support in Seattle. He wanted to understand why many low-income families choose to live in neighborhoods that are objectively a challenging area in which to grow up poor, when there are equally affordable better neighborhoods nearby.

Some quick background reading links if people are interested.

Executive summary of housing vouchers research: https://opportunityinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/cmto_summary.pdf

Op ed on housing vouchers research: https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/456969-federal-housing-choice-voucher-program-must-be-modernized?rnd=1565467659

Summary of research on car loan shopping behavior: http://news.mit.edu/2020/loan-payments-round-numbers-palmer-0220 and https://theconversation.com/youre-probably-paying-more-for-your-car-loan-or-mortgage-than-you-should-90993

More About Our Speaker
Christopher Palmer is the Albert and Jeanne Clear Career Development Professor and an Assistant Professor of Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management where he teaches corporate finance. His research focuses on how credit, real estate, and labor markets respond to periods of significant upheaval. Professor Palmer is also a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and an Affiliate with the Jameel Poverty Action Lab. He previously taught real estate finance at the University of California Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. Prior to graduate school, he consulted with Compass-Lexecon. Professor Palmer holds a BA in economics and mathematics from Brigham Young University and a PhD in economics from MIT. He grew up in Belmont, MA. 

See more about Prof. Palmer at https://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty/directory/christopher-j-palmer.