The Center for Research on Consumer Financial Decision Making conducts original scientific research and promotes dialogue among experts from academia, business, and government on the topic of how to help consumers make better financial decisions.

Consumer welfare is strongly affected by household financial decisions large and small: choosing mortgages; saving to fund college education or retirement; using credit cards to fund current consumption; choosing how to “decumulate” savings in retirement; deciding how to pay for health care and insurance; and investing in the stock market. In all of these domains, consumers are often poorly informed and susceptible to making serious errors that have large personal and societal consequences.

Basic research in judgment and decision making, psychology, consumer research, behavioral finance, and behavioral economics can inform our understanding of how consumers actually make such decisions and how they can be helped to make better decisions by innovations in public policy, business, and consumer education.