Using unique consumer financial transactions of more than 56,000 consumers, we study the consumption response to a housing policy experiment in Singapore that resulted in a decrease in access to home equity. Using difference-in-differences analysis, we find a significant negative consumption response to the policy shock. Moreover, the consumption response is concentrated in credit card spending and is stronger among individuals with limited access to credit market or with a high precautionary saving motive. These results suggest that a decrease in access to home equity reduces the role of housing as a self-insurance mechanism for consumption smoothing.

Using a staggered installation of sanitary pad vending machines across schools in the Indian state of Kerala, we study the impacts of free monthly access to sanitary pads on girls' educational outcomes. We find that the number of dropouts among female students in the 7th-grade decrease by 24 percentage points and the attendance rate increases by 23 percentage points after the treatment. Our results are mainly driven by girls in backward-caste, rural schools, and public schools, supporting the idea that free distribution of sanitary pads alleviates cost of obtaining sanitary pads.

This study assesses a new mechanism, the deposit channel, in the transmission of interest rate shock to household consumption using an administrative panel data set of financial transactions for Turkey. Our empirical strategy exploits variation in consumers' adherence to the Islamic laws that forbid earning interest and employs a standard difference-in-difference design. Following an unanticipated announcement of interest rate hike, rate-sensitive consumers significantly reduce their overall spending, and the response persists throughout the post-announcement period. The response of debt payment, disparate exposure to inflation, exchange rate, and the demographic difference can hardly fully account for the documented consumption response heterogeneity.

Using a novel scanner data and difference-in-differences strategy, we assess how consumers respond to a large-scale tax reform in India that introduces exogenous variations in tax rate changes at the product level. We show evidence of a strong and persistent spending response to tax rate changes. The response is highly asymmetrical, with consumers responding significantly more strongly to tax rate increases than to decreases. We find empirical support for both intertemporal and cross-product substitution effects: Households (1) shift consumption forward preceding a tax increase and (2) substitute one good for another and alter their relative weight in the consumption basket to avoid paying higher tax. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that consumers with more personal shopping experience exhibit stronger consumption responses. Our findings have empirical implications for the efficacy of tax policy initiatives.

Search frictions and misallocation are common in decentralized transportation markets. Using novel trip-level data of taxis in Singapore, this paper examines the impactof real-time demand information at airport terminals on search frictions. The in-formation reduces taxi supply misallocation, increasing deadheading speed by 16.3%and decreasing deadheading time by 10.77%, benefiting both passengers and drivers.It raises daily earnings by $3.70 USD and adds 6.2 minutes of operational time perairport-trip taxi. Spatial spillovers are primarily observed among drivers in adjacentdistricts. Taxis from the Budget Terminal and drivers with fewer prior airport pickups benefit more from this information.

A large-scale microcredit expansion program—together with a credit bureau accessible to all lenders—can enable unbanked borrowers to build a credit history, facilitating their transition to commercial banks. Loan-level data from Rwanda show the program improved access to credit and reduced poverty. A sizable share of first-time borrowers switched to commercial banks, which cream-skim less risky borrowers and grant them larger, cheaper, and longer-maturity loans. Switchers have lower default risk than nonswitchers and are not riskier than other bank borrowers. Switchers also obtain better loan terms from banks compared with first-time bank borrowers without a credit history.