Consumer Information & the Mortgage Market

Sumit Agarwal

Sumit Agarwal is a financial economist with the research department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and an Adjunct Professor in the Finance Department at DePaul University. His research interests include household finance, as well as corporate finance, financial institutions and capital markets. Dr. Agarwal’s research has been published in the Journal of Political Economy; Journal of Money, Credit and Banking; Journal of Financial Intermediation; and Real Estate Economics. Additionally, he has edited a collected volume on Household Credit Usage: Personal Debt and Mortgages. Prior to joining the Chicago Fed in July 2006, Dr. Agarwal was a senior vice president and credit risk management executive in the Small Business Risk Solutions Group of Bank of America. Dr. Agarwal received a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.

Brent Ambrose

Brent Ambrose is the Jeffery L. and Cindy M. King Faculty Fellow in Business and Professor of Real Estate at the Pennsylvania State University. Prior to joining Penn State, Dr. Ambrose was the Director of the Center for Real Estate Studies and Professor of Finance at the University of Kentucky, where he held the Kentucky Real Estate Professorship. In addition, he has been an Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a Visiting Associate Professor and Research Fellow at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Ambrose currently serves as the Second Vice President and Program Chair of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association (AREUEA), where he also served as the Executive Vice President. In addition, he was elected a Fellow of the Weimer School of Advanced Studies in Real Estate and Land Economics at the Homer Hoyt Advanced Studies Institute in 2003; a Fellow of the Real Estate Research Institute in 2004, and appointed a Fellow of the FDIC Center for Financial Research in 2006. Currently, Dr. Ambrose serves on the editorial boards of The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics; the Journal of Real Estate Research; the International Real Estate Review; and Real Estate Economics, and is a member of the board of directors for the Real Estate Research Institute and the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.

Dr. Ambrose specializes in real estate finance, corporate finance, and fixed income security analysis. His research interests include: issues related to Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs); loss mitigation programs associated with mortgage default and foreclosure; Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs); fixed-income securities; and consumer credit contracts. Dr. Ambrose has consulted with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Congressional Budget Office on several occasions on issues concerning FHA mortgage default and foreclosure, economically targeted assets, privatization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the GSEs’ affordable housing goals. Dr. Ambrose has published extensively in the fields of real estate and finance. His work appears in The Journal of Money Credit and Banking, The Journal of Financial Intermediation, The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Financial Services Research, Financial Management, Financial Analysts Journal, Real Estate Economics, Regional Science and Urban Economics, Journal of Real Estate Research, Journal of Urban Economics, Journal of Housing Economics, Journal of Housing Research, The Wharton Real Estate Review, and Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research. In addition, he is co-editor of Household Credit Usage: Personal Debt and Mortgages, published by Palgrave/MacMillian. Dr. Ambrose holds a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia.

Michael Baye

Michael Baye is the Director of the Bureau of Economics at the Federal Trade Commission. He is on leave from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, where he served as the Bert Elwert Professor of Business since 1997. He previously held academic positions at Pennsylvania State University, Texas A&M University, and the University of Kentucky, as well as visiting appointments at Cambridge University, Oxford University, Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and the New Economic School in Moscow, Russia. Prior to his current position as chief economist at the FTC, he consulted and provided expert testimony in a variety of antitrust matters in the U.S. and abroad. Past clients have included states, private companies, the Canadian Competition Bureau, and the U. S. Department of Justice.

Dr. Baye has won numerous awards for his outstanding teaching and research. He is the author of a managerial economics textbook, which has been translated into four languages and is taught to business students around the world. Dr. Baye’s research on mergers, auctions, patents and other contests has been published in such journals as the American Economic Review, The Review of Economic Studies, and The Economic Journal. His research on pricing strategies in online and other environments where consumers search for price information has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Fulbright Commission, and other organizations; published in leading economics journals such as the American Economic Review, Econometrica, and the Journal of Political Economy; and featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and The New York Times. He has served as an editor of Advances in Applied Microeconomics, an associate editor of Journal of Economics & Governance, and on the editorial boards of Economic Theory and the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing. He received a Ph.D. in Economics from Purdue University’s Krannert School of Management.

Souphala Chomsisengphet

Souphala Chomsisengphet is a Senior Financial Economist with the Risk Analysis Division of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Her current work at the OCC involves evaluating banks’ development and validation of credit risk models for underwriting, risk management and capital allocation. Dr. Chomsisengphet’s research interests are in the areas of household finance and financial institutions. She has published her research in the Journal of Urban Economics, Journal of Financial Intermediation, Real Estate Economics, and The Journal of Housing Economics. Before joining the OCC, Dr. Chomsisengphet was an Economist at the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.

Jeanne M. Hogarth

Jeanne Hogarth is the manager for the Consumer Education and Research Section of the Division of Consumer and Community Affairs at the Federal Reserve Board. Dr. Hogarth’s previous experience includes 7 years of high school teaching, a year on the Extension faculty at the University of Illinois, and 13 years on the Consumer Economics faculty at Cornell University. During her tenure at Cornell, Dr. Hogarth was responsible for community education programs related to family financial management and consumer economics through Cornell Cooperative Extension. At the Federal Reserve Board, Dr. Hogarth is responsible for research and outreach initiatives related to consumer financial services. Her recent projects include initiatives on consumers’ use of banking services, consumer protection strategies, and consumer testing for comprehension and usability of disclosure notices. Dr. Hogarth is responsible for the Board’s consumer information materials on financial services, both in print and on the web. She is the author of numerous scholarly research articles as well as consumer education resources on financial management. Both her research and her consumer education programs have received awards for their excellence. Dr. Hogarth received a Ph.D. in family and consumer economics from The Ohio State University.

Pauline M. Ippolito

Pauline M. Ippolito is currently Deputy Director in the Bureau of Economics at the Federal Trade Commission. She has held a variety of management and staff positions since joining the FTC staff. Dr. Ippolito’s research and policy interests include the economics of risk and information in consumer good markets and the design of public policy for advertising and labeling. In recent years, she has focused on the role of advertising and information in food markets and has been active in the debates about the best policies towards health-related claims for food products. Dr. Ippolito has also been involved in the agency’s fraud and ID theft surveys, studies of marketing to children, and efforts to improve consumer disclosures in mortgage markets. In addition, she has done research on resale price maintenance. Dr. Ippolito holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Northwestern University.

Susan Kleimann

Susan Kleimann is President of Kleimann Communication Group, a leader in the field of clear communication, and an internationally recognized plain language expert. She has over 30 years of experience providing thoughtful technical communications expertise to numerous organizations. Dr. Kleimann’s work is grounded in the fundamental principle that documents are the vessel for communicating policy, practices, and procedures. They must therefore deliver information clearly so they do their job of communicating essential information to people in an understandable and usable way. Dr. Kleimann and her team have led transformative qualitative and quantitative research, information design, instructional design, and organizational process projects on high priority and recognizable documents for many government agencies. Those agencies include: the Federal Trade Commission, USDA Food and Nutrition Services, the Veteran’s Benefits Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Dr. Kleimann previously served as the Director of the Document Design Center at the American Institutes of Research and served as the first Executive Director of the Center for Plain Language in Washington, D.C. Dr. Kleimann received a Ph.D. in Rhetoric from the University of Maryland at College Park.

Morris Kleiner

Morris M. Kleiner is a Professor at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs and the Industrial Relations Center at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. He is also a Research Associate in Labor Studies at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a Visiting Scholar in the Economic Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Dr. Kleiner has served as an associate in employment policy with the Brookings Institution, a visiting scholar in the Harvard University economics department, and a research fellow at the London School of Economics. Dr. Kleiner has published extensively on issues of occupational regulation in academic and professional journals and books, and has presented his work on this topic at universities in Europe, Australia, and the U.S. In addition, he has provided advice on occupation regulation policy to the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice, state legislatures, and occupation associations. Dr. Kleiner received a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Illinois.

William E. Kovacic

William E. Kovacic was designated to serve as Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission on March 30, 2008, by President George W. Bush. Chairman Kovacic was previously sworn in as a Commissioner in January 2006, following his nomination by the President and confirmation by the U.S. Senate. Prior to his appointment as FTC Commissioner, Chairman Kovacic was the E.K. Gubin Professor of Government Contracts Law at George Washington University Law School, where he began to teach in 1999. He was the FTC’s General Counsel from 2001 through the end of 2004. Chairman Kovacic earlier worked at the Commission from 1979 to 1983, first with the Bureau of Competition’s Planning Office and later as an attorney advisor to former Commissioner George W. Douglas. After leaving the FTC in 1983, he was an associate with the Washington, DC, office of Bryan Cave, where he practiced in the firm’s antitrust and government contracts departments, until joining the George Mason University School of Law in 1986. Earlier in his career, he spent one year on the majority staff of the Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, which was chaired by Senator Philip A. Hart. Since 1992, Chairman Kovacic has served as an adviser on antitrust and consumer protection issues to the governments of Armenia, Benin, Egypt, El Salvador, Georgia, Guyana, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Morocco, Nepal, Panama, Russia, Ukraine, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe. Chairman Kovacic received his J.D. from Columbia University.

James M. Lacko

James M. Lacko is an Economist and Deputy Assistant Director in the Division of Consumer Protection in the Bureau of Economics at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). He has 25 years of experience analyzing a wide range of consumer information and disclosure issues at the FTC. Dr. Lacko has published empirical studies on information asymmetries in the used car market; consumer experiences with rent-to-own transactions; the impact of mortgage broker compensation disclosures on consumers and competition; and consumer understanding of current and prototype mortgage disclosures. Dr. Lacko holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Maryland.

David Laibson

David Laibson is a Professor of Economics at Harvard University and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Dr. Laibson serves on numerous editorial boards, as well as the boards of the Health and Retirement Survey and the Pension Research Council. He is a recipient of a Marshall Scholarship and grants from the National Science Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the National Institute on Aging, the Sloan Foundation, the Social Security Administration, and the Financial Institute Regulatory Authority. Dr. Laibson co-organizes the Russell Sage Foundation's Summer School in Behavioral Economics. His research interests include: macroeconomics, psychology and economics, neuroeconomics, and finance. Dr. Laibson holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Jesse Leary

Jesse Leary is the Assistant Director for Consumer Protection in the FTC’s Bureau of Economics. He joined the FTC as a staff economist in 1999. Dr. Leary has worked on range of investigations and enforcement actions involving allegations of discrimination in mortgage lending or deceptive lending (“predatory lending”) and was the lead researcher on the FTC’s recent study of credit-based insurance scoring. In his current role, he supervises the FTC economists that work on all aspects of the Commission’s consumer protection mission, including the consumer credit and mortgage lending areas. Dr. Leary received his Ph.D. from Cornell University.

Jonathan Levin

Jonathan Levin is Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at Stanford University, where he has taught since 2000. He is currently a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Dr. Levin’s research focuses on industrial organization, particularly the design of market rules and institutions. He has recently studied informational problems in sub-prime lending markets. Dr. Levin has been a Fulbright Scholar, a Sloan Foundation Research Fellow, and a National Science Foundation Career award recipient. Dr. Levin holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Annamaria Lusardi

Annamaria Lusardi is Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and is currently a visiting scholar at Harvard Business School. She has also taught at Princeton University, the University of Chicago Public Policy School, and the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. Dr. Lusardi is a member of the Technical Review Committee for the Bureau of Labor Statistics' National Longitudinal Surveys Program, and a member of the Scientific Committee of the Center for Research on Pensions and Welfare Policies (CeRP), Turin, Italy. Her main areas of research are saving, Social Security and pensions, financial literacy and financial education, and entrepreneurship. She has won numerous research awards including: a research fellowship from the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago, a faculty fellowship from the John. M. Olin Foundation, and a junior and senior faculty fellowship from Dartmouth College. Together with Olivia Mitchell, Dr. Lusardi is the recipient of the Fidelity Pyramid Prize, awarded to authors of published applied research that best helps address the goal of improving lifelong financial well-being for Americans. Dr. Lusardi holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University.

John G. Lynch Jr.

John G. Lynch, Jr. is the Roy J. Bostock Professor of Marketing at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. Dr. Lynch is past president of the Association for Consumer Research, the 2003 recipient of the Society for Consumer Psychology's Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award, and the 2004 recipient of the American Marketing Association's Paul D. Converse Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Science of Marketing. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and Fellow of the Society for Consumer Psychology. Four of Dr. Lynch’s papers have been honored as outstanding article of the year, two by the Journal of Consumer Research, one by the Journal of Marketing Research, and one by the Journal of Marketing. His 1997 paper on Internet shopping is the 3rd most cited paper to appear in any marketing journal since 1997, and his 2000 paper on price sensitivity on the Internet is the 3rd most cited paper to appear in any marketing journal since 2000. Dr. Lynch is a member of the editorial boards of Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Consumer Psychology, the Journal of Marketing Research, and the Journal of Marketing. His current research focuses on intertemporal choice, the psychology of discounting future time and future money, and the role of planning for the use of time and money. Dr. Lynch received his Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Illinois.

Christopher Mayer

Christopher Mayer is the Paul Milstein Professor and Director of the Paul Milstein Center for Real Estate at Columbia Business School. In addition, he is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, on the Board of Editors of Real Estate Economics and Journal of Urban Economics, and a Fellow of the Homer Hoyt Institute. Dr. Mayer’s research explores a variety of topics in real estate including: real estate cycles, capital markets, housing, public and private real estate values, and debt securitization. He has also written about the market for reverse mortgages, the link between local government activities and housing values, and the economics of airline congestion. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Government of Canada, and the Real Estate Research Institute, among others. Dr. Mayer previously held positions at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Thomas B. Pahl

Thomas B. Pahl is an Assistant Director in the FTC’s Division of Financial Practices where he works on mortgage lending, including mortgage disclosure issues. He previously served as an attorney advisor for FTC Commissioners Mary Azcuenaga and Orson Swindle, as well as an Assistant Director in the FTC’s Division of Advertising Practices, and a counsel to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee. Mr. Pahl received his J.D. from the Northwestern University School of Law.

Janis K. Pappalardo

Janis K. Pappalardo is an economist at the Federal Trade Commission, where she has studied the role of consumer information and regulation in many markets, including food, drug, household appliance, and mortgage markets. Dr. Pappalardo co-authored two reports on mortgage disclosures with Dr. James Lacko: “The Effect of Mortgage Broker Compensation Disclosures on Consumers and Competition: A Controlled Experiment” and “Improving Mortgage Disclosures: An Empirical Assessment of Current and Prototype Disclosure Forms.” Her research has been published in Journal of Public Policy & Marketing (JPP&M), Review of Industrial Organization, and Antitrust Law Journal. Two articles co-authored by Dr. Pappalardo received JPP&M’s outstanding article award. Her research interests are focused on the regulation of information for risky products. She served as a presenting faculty member at the University of Southern California’s Risk Research Workshop, and on the Association for Consumer Research Board. Dr. Pappalardo currently serves on the JPP&M Editorial Board, and Villanova University’s Center for Public Policy Research Advisory Board. Dr. Pappalardo received her Ph.D. from Cornell University, with a major field in consumer economics and secondary fields in statistics and industrial organization.

Paul A. Pautler

Paul Pautler is the Deputy Director for Consumer Protection in the Bureau of Economics of the Federal Trade Commission. In that role, Dr. Pautler has overall responsibility for the economic input into consumer protection casework, economic studies, and the Commission’s Competition Advocacy Program. He previously held several supervisory positions at the FTC including Assistant Director for Antitrust. Dr. Pautler has published on antitrust economics and policy, health economics, and regulation. His research has been published in The Antitrust Bulletin; Journal of Law and Economics; Economic Inquiry; and the Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law. Most recently, his work has focused on consumer policy and mergers. Dr. Pautler received his Ph.D. in Economics from Texas A&M University.

Karen Pence

Karen Pence is a Senior Economist in the Household and Real Estate Finance section of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Her research has appeared in the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, the National Tax Journal, and Contributions to Economic Analysis and Policy. Dr. Pence’s research focuses on household financial decisions, with a current emphasis on both subprime mortgages and student loans. She serves on the board of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association. Dr. Pence holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Anthony Pennington-Cross

Anthony Pennington-Cross is an Associate Professor of Finance in the College of Business Administration at Marquette University. Dr. Pennington-Cross is widely published in academic journals including: The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Journal of Urban Economics, and Real Estate Economics. His recent research has focused on subprime lending in the housing market (pricing, predatory lending laws, and mortgage performance), house price dynamics, and other urban and real estate issues. Prior to joining Marquette University, Dr. Pennington-Cross was a Senior Economist in the Research Division at The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis where he organized a conference on Federal Government liabilities and lead research on subprime lending in the mortgage markets and related predatory lending issues. He also served as a Senior Economist at the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight in the Office of Policy and Research, the Director of Research at the Research Institute for Housing America (RIHA), and completed a Post Doctoral Fellowship at the Zell & Lurie Real Estate Center at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Pennington-Cross holds a Ph.D. in Economics from The George Washington University.

Vanessa Gail Perry

Vanessa Gail Perry is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the George Washington University School of Business (GWU). Her research is in marketing and public policy, particularly in the areas of consumer information acquisition and the effects of markets on consumers. Dr. Perry’s research on consumer financial literacy and financial decision-making has been published in The Journal of Behavioral Finance, The Journal of Consumer Affairs, and a host of other academic and professional publications. In addition, she has served as a consultant to numerous clients in the private and public sectors, such as the Bank of America, the National Association of Realtors, the Hispanic National Mortgage Association, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Before joining the faculty at GWU, Dr. Perry worked as a Senior Economist at Freddie Mac, where she conducted research in affordable housing, fair lending, and credit policy issues. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Alex J. Pollock

Alex J. Pollock has been a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute since 2004, focusing on financial policy issues, including government-sponsored enterprises, housing finance, retirement finance, corporate governance, and accounting standards. Previously, he spent thirty-five years in banking, including twelve years as president and CEO of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago, while also writing numerous articles on financial systems and management. Mr. Pollack is a director of Allied Capital Corporation, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Great Lakes Higher Education Corporation, the International Union for Housing Finance, and Chairman of the Board of the Great Books Foundation. He received an M.P.A. in International Relations from Princeton University.

Richard M. Todd

Richard M. Todd is a Vice President in the Supervision, Regulation and Credit Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, with responsibilities for Community Affairs and economic and monetary policy analysis. He has also served at the Bank as an economist in the Research Department, as the Bank’s discount window and payments systems risk officer, and as an officer in Information Technology. Dr. Todd has published articles on the economics of homeownership, poverty, financial education, monetary policy, business cycles, financial regulation, forecasting, and seasonality and has taught as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Minnesota, the University of St. Thomas, the Warsaw School of Economics, and Macalester College. He is currently on the Board of the Minnesota Council on Economic Education, the Minnesota Jump$tart Coalition, the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development, and the Working Family Resource Center. He holds a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Applied Economics from the University of Minnesota.

Susan Wachter

Susan Wachter is the Richard B. Worley Professor of Financial Management and Professor of Real Estate and Finance at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Wachter served as Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, a President appointed and Senate confirmed position. Past Chairperson of the Wharton Real Estate Department, Dr. Wachter is the author of over 150 publications. Dr. Wachter has served as President of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association and coeditor of Real Estate Economics. She currently serves on multiple real estate journal editorial boards and is Co-Director of the Penn Institute for Urban Research. Dr. Wachter holds a Ph.D. from Boston University.

David Weil

David Weil is Professor of Economics and Everett W. Lord Distinguished Faculty Scholar at Boston University School of Management. He is also co-Director of the Transparency Policy Project at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Dr. Weil’s research spans regulatory and labor market policy, industrial and labor relations, occupational safety and health, and transparency policy. He is widely published in academic and popular journals and co-authored three books, including the recently released Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency (Cambridge University Press, 2007) and the award-winning Stitch in Time: Lean Retailing and the Transformation of Manufacturing (Oxford University Press, 1999). In addition to his research, Dr. Weil has served as an advisor to the U.S. Department of Labor and other government agencies, as well as a mediator in a variety of labor/management settings in the U.S. and abroad. Dr. Weil received a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard University.

Paul Willen

Paul Willen is a Senior Economist and Policy Advisor in the Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank at Boston. Dr. Willen’s research is focused on household financial management, and he has devoted much of his time in recent years to studying home mortgages. Prior to joining the Boston Fed, Dr. Willen taught at Princeton University and the University of Chicago. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University.

Susan Woodward

Susan Woodward is the Founder and Chairman of Sand Hill Econometrics, which publishes an index for venture capital. Dr. Woodward, an expert in financial economics, has held appointments in both academia and government. She has been on the faculties of the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Rochester's Simon School. She has also served as Chief Economist of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Chief Economist of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Senior Staff Economist for Financial Markets and Institutions at the Council of Economic Advisers. Dr. Woodward is the author of the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s "A Study of Closing Costs for FHA Mortgages." She holds a Ph.D. in Financial Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles.