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Working papers

Papers under review or in progress. Feedback is welcome; drafts that are not yet posted are available by email.

Working papers

1. Temporal Focal Points and Economic Outcomes: Evidence from U.S. Mortgage Lending

   With Marco Giacoletti and Edison Yu

   Lender incentives shape who gets approved for mortgages: when month-end quotas push loan officers to approve more loans, a 7-point unexplained gap in approval rates shrinks by at least half.

2. Fallible Firms: The Economics of Consumer Redress

   With Charlotte Haendler

   In CFPB complaint data, whether consumers get money back after complaining about a financial firm depends more on who complains than on which firm is involved.

3. Pushing Boundaries: Political Redistricting and Consumer Credit

   With Pat Akey, Christine Dobridge, and Stefan Lewellen

   Consumers lose access to credit when their congressional districts are irregularly redrawn, especially where later elections become less competitive.

4. Five Facts about Bequest Motives

   With Xiang Li

   Bequest motives are stronger for people with heirs and the very wealthy, follow a U-shape over life, and people overestimate the bequests they will leave.

5. The Wealth Draw-down of the Fabulously Rich: Insights from Private Family Foundations

   With Changhyun Ahn

   Draft available on request

   When the eldest member of a very wealthy family dies, the family foundation roughly doubles in size, but charitable giving lags far behind.

6. Single-Family REITs and Local Housing Markets

   With Marco Giacoletti, Wenli Li, and Edison Yu

   Single-family REITs buy homes in neighborhoods ringing city centers, and their growth shows little evidence of harming local housing markets.

7. Brokerage Commissions and Trading Volume: Lessons from the 20th Century

   With Valeria Fedyk

   Draft available on request

   Higher trading costs can increase trading: under fixed NYSE commission schedules, higher commissions raised volume, consistent with brokers steering investors toward high-commission stocks.

8. Borrowing Young, Paying Later

   With Allison Cole and Igor Livshits

   Draft available on request

   Restricting young adults’ credit access protects them from early defaults but creates adverse selection later: after the Credit CARD Act, credit scores and homeownership rose by age 30 while mortgage delinquency increased.

9. Waiting for Wealth: Inheritances and Household Savings

   With Eirik Eylands Brandsaas and Mateo Velásquez-Giraldo

   Draft available on request

   Life-cycle models that omit inheritances overstate how patient households are; expected inheritances raise consumption and lower saving long before they arrive.