The Rational Reminder Podcast – June 20th, 2024 with Antoinette Schoar
This week Antoinette Schoar joined the hosts of The Rational Reminder Podcast for a discussion about consumer finance, crypto, target date funds and more.
Ideas Made to Matter: Lending standards can be too tight for too long, research finds
When the lending market is too tight, competition among lenders can lead to excessive due diligence, prolonging a credit crunch.
Ideas Made to Matter: How retirement saving incentives amplify wealth gaps in the U.S.
Changing how more than $300 billion of annual incentives are allocated could close the racial gap in retirement savings by a third, a new study finds.
How credit is allocated during booms can predict busts
New MIT Sloan research finds firms producing domestic goods and services most strongly predict potential economic slowdowns and systemic crises, with implications for policymakers looking to bolster the economy and safeguard the financial system.
Brazil Teams Up with Sloanies to Combat Retirement Crisis
In late January, Brazil launched the RendA+ treasury bond, a new retirement security adapted from the work of School of Management Distinguished Professor of Finance and Nobel Prize in Economics laureate Robert C. Merton, PhD ’70, and Arun Muralidhar, PhD ’92.
Our mission
The purpose of our research is to equip individuals, financial institutions and policy makers with better models and tools to navigate the changing world of consumer finance.
New technologies – from artificial intelligence and big data to Web3 and mobile devices – are disrupting consumer financial markets and causing significant changes in the way people save, borrow, buy insurance, or make payments.
The greater commoditization and decentralization of financial decisions and the rise of new intermediaries means that the average consumer is increasingly managing financial risks and rewards individually. This is changing not only the market for consumer financial products, but also for financial advice, guidance, and information. The Consumer Finance Initiative, led by faculty at Sloan, will build an understanding of the markets, benefits, best practices, and best regulation as technologies change the consumer financial market.
While topics will evolve, our current focus is on recent important innovations such as payments technologies including cryptocurrencies, the rise of new solutions to financial advice that rely on more automatization and algorithmic customization, and AI-based underwriting. Our team also studies advances and socialization of retail investing, retirement savings and the radical customization of investment funds, insur-tech and telematics.