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Louiza Bartzoka

Tenure Track Assistant Professor

Subjects
Finance Investment Savings Mortgage finance Interest rates

Primary research areas

House­hold Fin­ance
As­set Pri­cing
Macro­economics
Be­ha­vi­or­al Fin­ance

I ex­am­ine how agents' be­liefs and con­straints im­pact their fin­an­cial de­cisions.

I am a financial economist with research interests in household finance, asset pricing, macroeconomics and behavioral finance. I use structural methods, while finding new ways to leverage micro-data in model development and estimation.

My ongoing research pipeline is centered around two main areas of research: 1) the effect of household perceptions and expectations on household financial decisions, and 2) the effect of borrowing and liquidity constraints on households' financial decisions.

I received my Ph.D. in Finance from Imperial College Business School. During the Ph.D., I was a visiting student at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business for the Fall Quarter 2023 and an Intern at the Research Center of the Deutsche Bundesbank from July 2021 to January 2022.

Prior to starting the Ph.D., I worked as an Associate at JP Morgan in New York. I also hold a Master of Finance from the MIT Sloan School of Management. 

Recent research projects

House Price Per­cep­tions and the Hous­ing Wealth Ef­fect

In this pa­per, I de­term­ine the im­pact of house­hold house price per­cep­tions on the hous­ing wealth ef­fect. I build a struc­tur­al mod­el of con­sump­tion and hous­ing with en­do­gen­ous home own­er­ship choice, where house price per­cep­tions dif­fer by home own­er­ship status: renters are fully in­formed about house price changes, but own­ers are not. Along the cross-sec­tion of house­holds, the MPCH is largest for own­ers who face the highest li­quid­ity and debt con­straints, as well as for renters who are most likely to want to pur­chase a home.
Latest Version

Gender Dif­fer­ences in Re­ac­tions to In­come Shocks

Do wo­men re­spond dif­fer­ently to in­come shocks than men? We use ques­tions from the NY Fed Sur­vey of Con­sumer Ex­pect­a­tions that ask how wo­men and men would ad­just to an un­ex­pec­ted 10% change in in­come. Wo­men are more likely to re­pay debt after an un­ex­pec­ted in­crease in in­come, where men have a lar­ger mar­gin­al propensity to con­sume. When asked about how to buf­fer a de­crease in in­come, both men and wo­men re­port large re­duc­tions in spend­ing, but wo­men re­duce spend­ing more than men. Dif­fer­ences in debt ad­just­ment are re­lated to gender dif­fer­ences in the debt-to-in­come ra­tio, the de­gree of dis­cour­aged bor­row­ing and li­quid­ity con­straints, where wo­men are more likely to be con­strained.
Latest Version

Cred­it Con­straints and the Dis­tri­bu­tion­al Ef­fects of the Re­fin­an­cing Chan­nel

The prob­ab­il­ity a house­hold re­fin­ances their mort­gage de­pends on both the like­li­hood a house­hold ap­plies for re­fin­an­cing and the prob­ab­il­ity its ap­plic­a­tion is ap­proved by the re­cip­i­ent fin­an­cial in­sti­tu­tion. This pa­per de­vel­ops a mod­el that iden­ti­fies the house­hold-level prob­ab­il­ity of ap­prov­al sep­ar­ately from the ap­plic­a­tion prob­ab­il­ity. The pa­per then in­vest­ig­ates the dis­tri­bu­tion­al im­pact of cred­it con­straints on the trans­mis­sion of mon­et­ary policy through the mort­gage re­fin­an­cing chan­nel in the U.S. eco­nomy, un­der nor­mal or tightened cred­it stand­ards. These find­ings re­veal the house­holds that are most neg­at­ively af­fected by cred­it con­straints and thus in most need of stream­lined re­fin­an­cing pro­grams.
Latest Version

Cross-Coun­try Dif­fer­ences in House­hold Fin­an­cial De­cisions: A Struc­tur­al Ap­proach with Sur­vey-Based Ex­pect­a­tions

House­hold fin­an­cial de­cisions and their sub­ject­ive ex­pect­a­tions about mac­roe­co­nom­ic out­comes vary with­in and across coun­tries and change over time ac­cord­ing to the new Con­sumer Ex­pect­a­tions Sur­vey of the ECB. To ra­tion­al­ize the role of sub­ject­ive ex­pect­a­tions for fin­an­cial de­cisions, we es­tim­ate a struc­tur­al mod­el in which house­holds de­cide how much to save un­der their sur­vey-re­por­ted sub­ject­ive ex­pect­a­tions about the mac­roe­conomy.

Links

How has the pan­dem­ic af­fected house­hold fin­ances in de­vel­op­ing eco­nom­ies?
Around the world, Cov­id-19 had ex­posed the fra­gil­ity of house­holds’ eco­nom­ic and fin­an­cial well­being. Our evid­ence sug­gests that a large part of the world’s pop­u­la­tion have in­suf­fi­cient sav­ings to weath­er an in­come shock. In­deed, fin­an­cing an in­come short­fall for a peri­od of three months would lead to a com­plete de­ple­tion of li­quid fin­an­cial as­sets for a third of house­holds in our glob­al sample.
https://www.economicsobservatory.com/how-has-the-pandemic-affected-household-finances-in-developing-economies#:~:text=Low%20levels%20of%20savings%20have,struggle%20to%20finance%20such%20schemes