The NBER will host a virtual conference on Friday, December 4th, 2020 on "Innovative Data in Household Finance: Opportunities and Challenges." The meeting will be co-organized by Michaela Pagel (Columbia University and NBER), Christopher Tonetti (Stanford GSB and NBER), and Stephen Zeldes (Columbia University and NBER). The meeting will run from 10:00 am to 3:45 pm EDT.

The conference will bring together influential researchers, government officials, and private sector leaders who are using and creating innovative data sets and building research partnerships to advance our understanding of key issues in household finance. It will consist of short (10-20 minute) presentations of current papers that highlight the use of innovative data and panel discussions on challenges that arise when working with innovative data and potential solutions.

The conference organizers welcome submitted papers that use a wide variety of research approaches to study household finance. They especially encourage submissions of papers that use new datasets, original surveys, and/or run experiments (e.g., A/B testing). The subject of "household finance" is defined broadly, and includes:

- Household consumption, spending, and budgeting
- Consumer default and bankruptcy
- Household borrowing decisions, including decisions about specific types of credit, such as mortgages, credit cards, student loans, informal lending, and marketplace lending
- Household saving and investing/portfolio-choice decisions, including both financial and investments and real investments
- Insurance and other forms of household risk management
- Household payment choices
- Financial innovations in household finance
- Financial skills and capabilities
- The economics and industrial organization of the household financial industry
- Laws, regulations, and public policies that relate to about consumer finance

To submit a paper for consideration, please upload it as a pdf file, including a one paragraph description of the new data featured in the project, to:

http://www.nber.org/confsubmit/backend/cfp?id=IDHFf20

Submissions must be received by 11:59 pm EDT on Monday, October 26. Papers by researchers with and without NBER affiliations, by early career scholars, and by researchers from under-represented groups, are welcome. Please share this call for papers with other researchers on household finance topics. Authors of papers that are selected for the program will be notified by November 13; authors will only be contacted if their paper is selected.

Please direct administrative questions about this conference to Rob Shannon at the NBER conference department (rshannon@nber.org). Other questions can be directed to the conference organizers.