Research Funding and Opportunities

The Filene Research Institute has a limited number of Research Grants available for PhD students. Grants are awarded to active PhD candidates researching issues related to consumer finance and/or credit union-related topics. Currently Funded Projects:

Teresa Cardador, University of Illinois

 Teresa Cardador dissertation entitled, "How Organizations Shape the Meaning of Helping Others through Work:  Potential Implications for Expanded Credit Union Membership." Cardador examined the difference in how bank and credit union employees interpret the meaningfulness in their work. The following is an excerpt from her Executive Summary:

The findings from this research suggest important differences in the meaningfulness of work experienced by employees at the credit union versus commercial retail bank. These differences were due in large part to differences in member characteristics, as well as organizational mission, practices and leadership.  While this research suggests several practical implications for organizations, one important implication is that credit unions moving toward larger and more diverse memberships should be cautioned that employee work meaningfulness might be affected by this change

Download the entire paper here.

Teresa is now an Assistant Professor of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois. She is continuing her research, teaching courses in Employment Relations Systems and Negotiations, and working on submitting her paper to management journals.

Katie Fitzpatrick, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C.

Katie's dissertation topic is Behavioral Responses to Policy Reforms. Katie is exploring behavioral changes to policy reforms, with a specific focus on low-income populations. The following is an abstract from one of her papers:

An electronic transfer mandate in the U.K. Child Benefit program increased bank account ownership rates for families with children. I use this exogenous change to estimate the causal effect of account ownership on access to credit and consumption. When a family transitions into account ownership, I find a 17 percentage point increase in credit card ownership and an increase of 3 household appliances. I do not find robust evidence of changes in vehicle ownership, loan use, or weekly expenditures. My findings suggest that an important benefit of account ownership is access to credit which enables consumption of durable goods.

Download her papers here and here.

Kate is currently an Economist at the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. She is continuing her research on the behavioral response to low-income tax and transfer programs.

Ted O'Sullivan, PhD Candidate, University College Cork (Ireland)

Ted is currently working on a dissertation entitled An Exploration of the Impact of Education and Training on Board Performance in Credit Unions. Research to date has shown that an organization's success or failure is dependent on the performance of its board of directors. This research will seek to establish if a correlation exists between the performance of the board and the training and education uptake by the Board of Directors.

Soo Hyun Cho, PhD Candidate, Ohio State University

Soo is currently working on a dissertation entitled Understanding Individual's Saving Behavior: Mental Accouting Perspectives. Suggested by Thaler (1980), mental accounting is the set of cognitive operations used by individuals and households to organize, evaluate, and keep track of financial activities. Unlike neoclassical economic theories, people view money as not fungible and therefore,mental categorization of income and expenses play a pivotal role determining consumer’s decision to save. Using the framework, Soo will examine how consumers manage and perceive savings with respect to other accounts. Several individual characteristics that determine the extent mental accounting is incorporated are also of interest. These hypotheses will be investigated using both experimental and secondary data sets.

Syed Dinar, PhD Candidate, University of Phoenix

Syed's dissertation is titled The Role of Credit Unions as Mortgage Funding Alternatives in the Subprime Market. Recent activities in the mortgage market have contributed to the economic instability in the U.S. Aggressive non-conventional lending practices, decrease in lending standards and approving loans with existing higher debt-to-income ratio contributed to higher delinquencies and foreclosures in the mortgage market. However, mortgage related delinquencies and foreclosure rates are very low in the credit union industry. Credit unions are emerging as leaders in lending practices and pricing strategies for all mortgage related loans. This study will use a quantitative method to describe how credit unions serve the underserved and avoid higher rate of foreclosures by taking a measured approach in lending and by offering financial literacy to the borrowers.

Marieke Bos, PhD Candidate, University of Stockholm

Marieke's dissertation is titled Financial Exclusion and the Importance of Pawn Credit. She has collected an unique dataset on the social and financial background of pawn broking customers in Sweden. The data is of high quality and includes all information that the pawnbrokers and the credit bureau that collects data from all Swedish regular banks, have on the pawnshop customers. This data enables her to analyze the characteristics of pawnshop customers' access to mainstream and alternative means of finance, and their responds to conditions in credit markets. The project should shed new light on research questions related to credit availability that so far have only been investigated using data from mainstream financial institutions.

Dan Zhu, PhD Candidate, University of Wisconsin

Dan's dissertation is titled Expected and Actual Retirement Age: The Role of Debt in the Difference. Individuals plan their retirement based on expectations of their financial position at some expected retirement age, while their actual retirement well-being is determined by actual retirement timing. In order to fully understand retirement well-being and the effectiveness of retirement planning, it is important to understand why and to what degree there is divergence between retirement plans and actual behaviors, what factors lead to changes in retirement timing and the consequences of the divergence. Dan's dissertation explores the predictors of the divergence of actual from expected retirement timing, paying explicit attention to the role of debt in that divergence.

Maria Mogilnaya, PhD Candidate, De Montfort University (United Kingdom)

Maria's project is titled Deposit Protection Law Reform for the Benefit of the Consumer: Lessons from and for Russia. Her project evaluates the Russian deposit insurance scheme introduced in late 2003. She employs a case study approach whereby she looks at ten different banks and their clients (as sub-units of analysis) in terms of reform implementation and consumer awareness. Once the information (gathered during the field work) is analysed, Maria will evaluate the reform, identify the problems with implementation encountered by banks and examine whether the needs of the consumer were met during the process. This research, when completed, will shed light on many important issues of reform implementation in the consumer finance area.

Daniel Schneider, PhD Candidate, Princeton University

Daniel’s project is titled Social Security? Burial Societies in South Africa.  Burial societies are semi-formal savings groups intended to help members to save for the cost of funerals.  They vary in their specific organizational form, but generally involve an element of pooled savings, regular contributions, and social meetings.  Daniel investigates why people join these informal savings associations and what meaning participants give to membership.  Research in economics, anthropology, and sociology suggests that people may join burial societies because they may have no alternative products, may need peer support to successfully save, or may simply value the social exchange that comes with membership.  This project uses a mixed method approach, combining analysis of social surveys with in-depth qualitative interviews, to ask (1) why do poor South Africans join informal savings associations (2) what meaning does membership have?