CNB Research Seminar "Attention through Networks and the Transmission of Monetary Policy"
Prague, 5 October 2026
Marta Cota (Nova School of Business and Economics)
Marta Cota is an Assistant Professor at the Finance Department at Nova SBE and holds a Ph.D. degree in Economics from CERGE-EI. Her research lies at the intersection of macroeconomics and household finance. She works on developing structural models of household decision-making that feature heterogeneity in expectations, financial sophistication, information, and search frictions, and studies mortgage choices, wealth accumulation, and the distributional effects of monetary policy. She is also a member of the CEPR Household Finance Research Policy Network and Financial Literacy and Personal Finance Group.
Attention through Networks and the Transmission of Monetary Policy (abstract)
We study a channel of monetary transmission in which household transactions generate attention to mortgage refinancing. A rate cut encourages home purchases, and purchases by relatives can prompt existing owners to reconsider their contracts. Using Dutch administrative data and a revision to borrowing limits, we identify the response of refinancing to family purchases. A one percentage point increase in the share of relatives who buy raises refinancing by 3.27 percentage points in the top income quintile, with a small and statistically insignificant response at the bottom. Coworker and neighbor networks show no comparable income gradient. We use these estimates to discipline a model in which attention responds to purchase activity and lenders price prepayment. The model separates the contribution of this attention from differences in households' financial incentives. Preliminary calculations imply that purchase-related attention multiplies the aggregate refinancing response to a rate cut by 3.6 and accounts for about one third of the income gap in that response. Monetary policy thus generates part of the attention through which it is transmitted, with unequal effects across households.