Consumer mistakes and advertising: The case of mortgage refinancing
Does advertising help consumers to find the products they need or push them to buy products they don’t need? In this paper we study the heterogeneous effects of advertising on consumer mistakes in the market for mortgage refinancing and quantify the resulting overall effect on the net present value...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Springer New York LLC
2019
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | View Fulltext in Publisher |
| Summary: | Does advertising help consumers to find the products they need or push them to buy products they don’t need? In this paper we study the heterogeneous effects of advertising on consumer mistakes in the market for mortgage refinancing and quantify the resulting overall effect on the net present value of mortgage debt. Mortgage borrowers frequently make costly refinancing mistakes by either refinancing when they should wait, or by waiting when they should refinance. We assemble a novel data set that combines a borrower’s exposure to direct mail refinance advertising and their subsequent refinancing decisions. Even though borrowers would lose on average |
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| ISBN: | 15707156 (ISSN) |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s11129-018-9207-3 |