The Georgia Institute of Technology, Financial Services Innovation Lab at the Scheller College of Business, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta are co-organizers of the first ever Household Finance Conference on March 23 to 24, 2023.
The importance of understanding the financial behavior of households has increased significantly in recent years for a combination of reasons. Factors include rising inflation rates, tighter monetary policy, innovations in consumer finance services, student loan reform, and more. Households are increasingly required to make complex financial decisions, including decisions around consumption, mortgages, student loans, consumer credit markets, investing, and retirement. The Household Finance Conference delves into these issues and facilitates discussions on the future of consumer finance.
This year’s conference brought together academic researchers, industry experts, and regulators to a common platform for an agenda centered around household and consumer finance. Apart from the academic sessions and keynotes, there were practitioner panels with industry executives to discuss the macroeconomic landscape, various issues impacting household balance sheets, and the challenges and opportunities of increasing financial inclusion.
Dean Maryam Alavi of the Scheller College of Business offered welcoming remarks, and subsequent sessions featured Sudheer Chava, Alton M. Costley Chair in Finance and director of the M.S. Quantitative and Computation Finance (QCF) program and Financial Services Innovation Lab; Manasa Gopal, assistant professor of Finance; and Yafei Zhang, Ph.D. candidate in Finance.