Benedict Guttman-Kenney

Academic Research Page, Policy Research Page, Presentations Page

 News

In June, my paper on consumer credit reporting data was published in the Journal of Economic Literature. This paper reviews the economics of the data and includes practical guidance for researchers on how to use these datasets.

I recently released a new working paper studying immigration and consumer credit in America. I presented this research at the Federal Reserve Board's Applied Microeconomics seminar in Washington D.C. on 30 June, at am due to present at the Leibniz Institute for Finance Research SAFE Household Finance Workshop in Germany on 10 July, and at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia's Consumer Finance Institute's seminar on 9 September.

During June/July, I am discussing three papers on credit information at the University of Michigan Ross 8th Mitsui Symposium: New Frontiers in Financial Intermediation, the Western Finance Association, and the Leibniz Institute for Finance Research SAFE Household Finance Workshop.

In August, I will be presenting three of my papers at the University of Edinburgh's Credit Scoring and Credit Control Conference.

In May, I spoke with Fintech Nexus about the state of the Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) market.

In April, I spoke with Yahoo! Finance about retirement savings decisions following the recent stock market crash. In March, I was on Houston Public Media's Houston Matters radio show speaking about payday lending (I'm on about 17 minutes in). In February, I chatted with NPR Marketplace about households' emergency savings. At the end of 2024, Yahoo! Finance covered my research on why information on how much you pay on your credit card is missing from your US credit report. 

In March, my credit card research: The Semblance of Success in Nudging Consumers to Pay Down Credit Card Debt was published in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy (Open Access link). This paper has been covered by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Yahoo! Finance. Summarized in Chicago Booth Review Article and also covered in various blogs (1) (2) (3) (4).

 Background

Before moving to Chicago for my Ph.D., I spent six years conducting economic research informing financial regulation at the UK Financial Conduct Authority, Bank of England, and Federal Reserve Bank of New York. I am a graduate of the University of Warwick and University College London. While studying for my Ph.D., I received the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Consumer Finance Dissertation Fellowship for my research. My research spans the academic fields of household finance, behavioral economics/finance, and FinTech. I have studied a variety of aspects of household finances including buy now pay later (BNPL), credit cards, credit files, and payday loans. In my research I study large datasets of granular household finances to understand consumer and firm behaviors, often using econometric methodologies to estimate the causal effects, and have run field experiments (RCTs) with lenders to test the effects of policies.

Media coverage includes The New York Times, The Financial Times (1 - weekend lead `big read') (2 - FT Tech video) (3 - front page), Wall Street Journal (1) (2), Houston Public Media, NPR - National Public Radio (1) (2), Yahoo! Finance (1) (2) (3), Barron's, BBC, Fintech Nexus, MarketWatch, Mashable, Fast Company, Raconteur, The Telegraph (1) (2), The FinTech Times, VoxEU/CEPR interview. 

My academic research has been published in leading finance, marketing, and economics journals with summaries in the Chicago Booth Review. For more information see my academic research page, CV, or Google Scholar.