Research · Issue areas
The Institute of FAME researches eight areas. Four concern the financial lives of households: stability, fraud, older adults and financial education. Four cover financial-education measurement and FinTech, building on the institute's published FinTech research. Each connects to live policy questions where decision-grade evidence has weight.
Issue area · Financial Stability
More than a third of U.S. adults say they could not cover a $400 emergency expense with cash or its equivalent. Which household conditions — income, available cash, debt, access to banking — best predict who falls into hardship, and what helps households recover?
Research on what keeps households financially steady: emergency savings, available cash, banking access and the everyday shocks that push families into hardship.
Issue area · Fraud and Scams
Americans reported $12.5 billion in fraud losses to the Federal Trade Commission in 2024. Who loses money to scams, how much of it comes back, and which protections actually reduce losses?
Evidence on who is targeted by financial fraud and scams, what victims lose in money and time, and which protections work.
Issue area · Older Adults
Most adults 65 and older report they are doing at least okay financially — but among older adults with household incomes under $25,000, fewer than half could cover a $400 emergency with cash. Which older adults are financially fragile, and how do fraud and late-life shocks affect them?
Research on the financial security of older Americans: emergency savings, retirement income, and exposure to fraud and exploitation.
Issue area · Financial Education
About 30 states now require high-school students to take a personal-finance course, and the states with the strongest requirements alone are projected to need about 37,000 highly trained personal-finance teachers by 2031. Who teaches these courses, how are they prepared, and what makes financial education effective?
Research on how personal-finance education is taught, who teaches it, and what helps students and adults make better financial decisions.
Issue area · Financial Education Measurement
About 30 states now require high-school students to take a personal-finance course, but curricula are rarely tested against students' later financial outcomes. What measurement-grade evidence shows which approaches actually predict how people manage money as adults?
Rigorous measurement and outcome-grounded research for the personal-finance curricula that schools now depend on.
Issue area · FinTech Regulation
Regulatory sandboxes have been adopted in more than fifty jurisdictions, but the evidence on whether they help productive firms enter the market has lagged. What does the UK record actually show, and what should U.S. and other regulators learn from it?
Empirical evidence on what regulatory sandboxes do to FinTech-firm performance — and what regulators can learn from the UK record.
Issue area · FinTech Consumer Protection
Buy-now-pay-later, alternative credit data and FinTech-driven small-business credit have produced uneven outcomes for lower-income households and small businesses. Which products expand access, and which raise costs or risks for the people who use them?
Evidence on FinTech adoption by households and small businesses, informing consumer-protection policy and small-business credit programs.
Issue area · CBDC and Digital Money
Many countries are exploring central bank digital currencies, yet retail use in early-launch markets has been thin. Under what conditions do people actually adopt new forms of digital money?
Evidence on how people respond to central bank digital currencies, stablecoins and other digital money — relevant to central-bank and legislative decisions on retail digital currency.
Some issue areas build on the institute's published papers; others are newer areas with work in preparation. The institute's current research programs are listed separately. The institute's published papers are the empirical foundation, and the policy positions page sets out the institute's standing on specific questions in selected areas.