My aliases include:
"Dad" to Elias and Ella
"JZ" to grad school classmates and colleagues

Research Interests
Fields: household finance, intertemporal choice, psychology&economics, development, public finance
                            high finance (10,000 feet)
   
Methods: field experiment design and implementation, survey design and implementation

Applications: business and policy innovations in retail financial markets (consumer, small business, microfinance)

Working Papers

Expanding Microenterprise Credit Access: Using Randomized Supply Decisions to Estimate the Impacts in Manila
  with Dean Karlan; new version with corrected descriptive statistics on income and education levels  (Jan 2010),
  thanks to David Roodman for prodding us: http://blogs.cgdev.org/open_book/2009/10/good-news-karlan-zinman- subjects-poor-after-all.php ), also discussed in The Economist, The Boston Globe, Financial Times, and elsewhere

Wintertime for Deceptive Advertising? (August 2009), with Eric Zitzewitz
  previous title: "Snowed: Deceptive Advertising by Ski Resorts"; The Chronicle of Higher Education misses the points;
  Zinman on WCAX and NPR (4Jan2010); NYTimes online (22jan2010), Salon and elsewhere in print

In Harm's Way? Payday Loan Access and Military Personnel Performance (August  2008), with Scott Carrell
(revising with additional data, new version of paper coming soon)

Household Borrowing High and Lending Low Under No-Arbitrage (April 2007)
   previous title: "Piecing Together a Portfolio Puzzle: Accounting for why Households Borrow High and Lend Low"

Consumer Homing on Payment Cards: From Theory to Measurement (August 2007), with Chris Snyder

Portfolio Choice as Liquidity Constraints Relax: Evidence from a Credit Card Supply Shock (January 2003)

Some Coming Attractions
Housing and Consumption, with Jon Skinner and Victor Stango

Some Parameter Estimates for Monetary Policy Models, with Victor Stango

Limited and Varying Consumer Attention: Evidence from Shocks to the Salience of Penalty Fees, with Victor Stango
A bit of related content in Financial Times

The Risk of Asking: Being Surveyed Affects Later Behavior, based on 5 field experiments and with numerous co-authors

Getting to the Top of Mind: Borrowing, Saving, and Limited Attention, with Dean Karlan,  Margaret McConnell, and Sendhil Mullainathan. Sneak previews in the Wall Street Journal, Slate, Kiplinger's (Feb 2010), and elsewhere

Forthcoming or Published
Put Your Money Where Your Butt Is: A Commitment Contract for Smoking Cessation (January 2010)
 forthcoming, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics; with Xavier Gine and Dean Karlan
 see NPR Morning Edition and The Economist for samples of media coverage

Fuzzy Math, Disclosure Regulation, and Credit Market Outcomes: Evidence from Truth-in-Lending Reform
  this version supersedes "How a Cognitive Bias Shapes Competition..."
forthcoming, Review of Financial Studies; with Victor Stango; mentioned in The New Yorker

Exponential Growth Bias and Household Finance
  previous titles: "Fuzzy Math and Household Finance: Theory and Evidence", "The Price is Not Right..."
Journal of Finance,  64(6), December 2009, with Victor Stango
   featured in The Wall Street Journal (January 16, 2008); Forbes.com (March 19, 2009), Parade Magazine (May 10, 2009)

What’s Advertising Content Worth? Evidence from a Consumer Credit Marketing Field Experiment
  previous title: "What's Psychology Worth?..."   Web Appendix   Data
Quarterly Journal of Economics, 125(1), February 2010, with M. Bertrand, D. Karlan, S. Mullainathan, and E. Shafir

Observing Unobservables: Identifying Information Asymmetries with a Consumer Credit Field Experiment
Econometrica, 77(6), November 2009, pp. 1993-2008, with Dean Karlan.
long version (recommended for teaching)   Web Appendix  Data

Credit Elasticities in Less-Developed Economies: Implications for Microfinance
American Economic Review, 98(3),  June 2008, pp. 1040-68. with Dean Karlan.  data  more results

Restricting Consumer Credit Access: Household Survey Evidence on Effects Around the Oregon Rate Cap
Journal of Banking and Finance, 34(3), March 2010, 546-556

Expanding Credit Access: Using Randomized Supply Decisions to Estimate the Impacts    Web Appendix   Data
Review of Financial Studies, 23(1), January 2010, with Dean Karlan
   winner of 2006 USAID Private Sector Development Impact Assessment Initiative
   featured in The Economist (August 4, 2007); Business Week online (December 13, 2007)

Small Individual Loans and Mental Health: A Randomized Controlled Trial Among South African Adults
BMC Public Health, 8:1, pp. 409-, with Lia Fernald, Rita Hamad, Dean Karlan, and Emily Ozer

Social and Economic Correlates of Depressive Symptoms and Perceived Stress in South African Adults
Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 62, pp. 538-544, with Rita Hamad, Lia Fernald, and Dean Karlan
published version available at http://jech.bmj.com/cgi/reprint/62/6/538

Lying About Borrowing
Journal of the European Economic Association (Papers and Proceedings), 6(2-3), April-May 2008. with D. Karlan.

Where is the Missing Credit Card Debt? Clues and Implications    Technical working paper version
Review of Income and Wealth, 55(2), 249-265; featured on creditcards.com

A Methodological Note on Using Loan Application & Survey Data to Measure Poverty & Loan Uses of Microcredit Clients, forthcoming, Journal of Development Economics (special issue on measurement), with Dean Karlan

Debit or Credit?      Web Appendix    EndNote template for JBF reference style
Journal of Banking and Finance, 33(2), February 2009, pp. 358-366
   2006 version: contains details on measurement error issues
   2004 version: more polemical, focusing on admittedly low-powered tests of  neoclassical vs. mental accounting models

What Do Consumers Really Pay on Their Checking and Credit Card Accounts? Explicit, Implicit, and Avoidable Costs
American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, 99(2), May 2009, 424-29, with Victor Stango
some related coverage in The Oregonian, Canadian Business

Youth Smoking in the United States:  Evidence and Implications.  NBER working paper version
 in Risky Behavior Among Youths: An Economic Analysis, ed. Jonathan Gruber, University of Chicago Press, 2000, with Jonathan Gruber
 

Plain Language Summaries, Arguments, and Ideas

WRITINGS:
Does ad content affect consumer demand? @lliance, September 2009
  with Dean Karlan and Manfred Kuhn

How government can guide small borrowers Financial Times op-ed (April 29, 2009; print version April 30, 2009)
  with Dean Karlan

Debit vs. Credit: How People Choose to Pay (Filene Research Institute, November 2008)
  with Victor Stango

Randomised Trials for Strategic Innovation in Retail Finance (2009)
forthcoming in Real Money, New Frontiers: Case Studies of Financial Innovations in Africa, ed. Mark Napier, Juta & Co. Ltd.; with Nathaniel Goldberg and Dean Karlan

In Defense of Usury.  Wall Street Journal op-ed (November 1, 2007)
  with Dean Karlan

Fuzzy Math and Red Ink: A Primer
  with Victor Stango

Fuzzy Math in Household Finance: A Practical Guide  (December 2007)
  with Victor Stango

Optimizing Loan Contracting and Marketing Using Field Experimentation (November 2006)
  with Dean Karlan, Prepared for the 2006 Microcredit Summit

SOME RECENT APPEARANCES AND PRESENTATIONS:
R&D for Financial Health (Financial Counseling Research Roundtable Meeting, Philly Fed, January 2010)

Information Technology and Markets for Information (IPA conference, January 2010)

New Commitment Devices (American Economic Association Meetings, January 2010)

Behavioral Retail Finance: Challenges in Moving from Research to Policy, 10/28/09
  Casey/New America/Sage Foundation Behavioral Economics and Policy Meeting

New, Safe, and Affordable Credit Options for America's Underbanked... Implications for Government Policy, 10/23/09
  Notes from my talk on credit access
  Also, Dean Karlan and I asked Congressman Barney Frank some questions, check back or elsewhere for a transcript

A Review of Empirical Research on Retail Payments
forthcoming, Effective Oversight of Payment and Settlement Systems, ed. Charlie Kahn, publisher: Henry Stewart Talks

Putting the "R" in R&D: Theory-Driven Experiments (May 2009)
MIT Center for Digital Business Research Workshop on "The Emerging Economics of Exponential Experimentation"

Promoting Financial Health: A Three-Legged Stool  (May 2009)
Prepared for Tess Tyson's Wellness Works class here at Dartmouth

Payday Loans and Bank Overdrafts: Some Policy Approaches, RAND/Behavioral Finance Forum (May 2009)
  video of proceedings

FiSCA Small Loan Dialogue Meeting; NH Commission to Study Access to Credit (October 2008)

Expanding Credit Access (How do subprime loans affect borrowers?)
 Bank Structure Conference (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago), May 15, 2008

What to do About Fuzzy Math and Red Ink?
Behavioral Finance Forum Webinar, November 28, 2007

Treating Financial Literacy: Promising Alternatives to Financial Education
Federal Reserve System Community Affairs Conference, November 14, 2007

Getting from R to D: Cutting Edge Research for Product & Market Development
Filene Research Institute i³ Team Stampede, September 2007

Randomized Experimentation for the Program Manager: A Quick How-To Guide
International Finance Corporation Monitoring and Evaluation Conference, May 2007

Randomized-Control Trials for Business Solutions: Putting Them to Work for You
Filene Research Institute Credit Union Research Council Meeting, October 2006

What Really Drives Consumer (Payment) Choice? Using Academic Models to Develop Business Applications
Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Consumer Behavior and Payments Choice Conference II, July 2006

Designing Shock Protection for Vulnerable Households: A How-To Guide
USAID BASIS/CRSP Policy Conference, June 2006

Does Microfinance Make $ense?  Experimental Approaches
International Finance Corporation Monitoring and Evaluation Conference, May 2006

Persuasion in Household Finance: New Evidence, New Applications
Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Community Protection Week Conference, March 2006

Elasticities of Demand for Consumer Credit: Evidence and Implications
USAID BASIS/CRSP Researcher/Practitioner Conference, March 2006

Debit or Credit?  (Why "Model" Consumer Payment Choice?)
Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Consumer Behavior and Payments Choice Conference, Oct 2005

Framing, Choice, and Household Finance
How to Increase the Effectiveness of Financial Education Workshop, Dartmouth College, Oct 2005

Pro-Poor Growth & Microfinance: Some Related Evidence, and a Research Agenda
The World Bank, April  2005

Studying Microfinance & its Impacts (or Lack Thereof): What Next?
Microfinance Mini-Conference, New York University, April 2005

BROADCAST MEDIA APPEARANCES
WDET (Detroit National Public Radio Affiliate), May 12, 2009. On credit card reform.

WNTK (Dartmouth/Sunapee region, NH), January 12, 2009.  On payday loans.

Filene Research Institute podcast, December 27, 2007.  On fuzzy math in household finance.

KSTP-AM (St. Paul, MN), November 9, 2007.  On consumer lending and related policy issues.

Fox Business News (TV), November 2, 2007.  On consumer lending and related policy issues.

Teaching

Current students: all assignments and related documents are on Blackboard or the reserve reading website.