We analyze the effect of an exogenous shock to the Italian mortgage market, where a reform has abolished prepayment fees and simplified mortgage refinancing, making it a virtually cost-free decision for households. This law, along with the considerable drop in market interest rates, has generated important gains for fixed-rate borrowers, which we quantify at up to 15% of the principal balance. Nevertheless, only about 13% of borrowers have locked in this opportunity. We study the relationship between this sluggish behavior and their level of financial literacy.

Hiring and promotion committees consider a broad range of journals and the relative importance of journal titles is highly subjective. In this paper, we present a novel approach to objective finance journal ranking by considering the impact of journal publications on career advancement. While the top three journals (Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies) are significant drivers of promotion success, other journals are nearly as important, particularly for business schools outside of the top tier. In rank order, these are the Journal of Banking and Finance, the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, the Journal of Corporate Finance, and the Review of Finance.