Working Papers

We develop modified benchmarking tests for disparate treatment that we apply to 25 years of mortgage lending. Our tests limit the scope for omitted variables by linking high-frequency mortgage decisions to an economic mechanism — loan officers have volume quotas that cause increased approval rates at month-end. We estimate that these quotas at least halve the unexplained 7 ppt Black approval gap. Loan officers more likely to miss their quotas have larger increases in Black approvals. Suggesting supply-side mechanisms, applications arrive at a constant rate within-month, and neither differences in credit risk nor applicant preferences explain the month-end decline in racial differences.

Financial disputes are a widespread but understudied feature of consumer financial markets. Using confidential data from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), we analyze nearly two million consumer complaints filed since 2014, which have led to an average payout of $1,470 per successful complaint. The volume of complaints and total restitution have increased substantially over time, suggesting significant scope for additional compensation. When understanding who secures restitution — and why — we find little evidence that differences across firms systematically drive restitution outcomes. Instead, product complexity and consumer engagement play key roles: consumers with higher income and education (high-SES) are more likely to explicitly request refunds, claim fraud, and submit supporting documentation, making firms more responsive. Leveraging previously unexamined CFPB monitoring reviews, where the agency systematically screens company responses and issues confidential reports highlighting deficiencies, we show that regulatory scrutiny increases restitution but disproportionately benefits high-SES consumers, reinforcing individual-specific mechanisms. Our results highlight the complementary nature of regulatory interventions and suggest that financial sophistication and self-advocacy are critical determinants of consumer redress.

Bequest motives are essential to models of inter-temporal economic choice but their empirical characteristics are largely undocumented. Using multiple sources of survey data that trace back as far as thirty years, we catalog four crucial findings on peoples' expectations of leaving inheritances and their subjective preferences toward bequests. (1) People overestimate the likelihood of leaving an inheritance and its size. (2) People's subjective preference toward leaving bequests is U-shaped over the life-cycle and (3) is larger for stock owners particularly those who experience high returns. (4) Bequests are subjectively more important for wealthier individuals, which is consistent with theories of bequests as a luxury good. Finally, we explore the implications of these stylized facts on wealth accumulation and portfolio choice in the context of a canonical life-cycle model with precautionary savings.

We connect genealogical records to the universe of 501(c)(3) private foundations to provide novel insights into the late-in-life assets holdings and charitable contributions of the wealthiest households in the U.S. This linkage allows us to track life-cycle financial assets and charitable disbursements for 8,850 families that hold an average of 22.4 million dollars annually in trust. In contrast to life-cycle models that predict a smooth draw-down of assets late in life, we find that the death of the eldest family member leads to an immediate 76.5% increase in assets held in trust. Yet few are prepared to distribute their wealth postmortem — charitable disbursements take years to match post-death inflows and funds are less likely to meet the five-percent rule to qualify for non-profit status. We also find that the doubling of the lifetime estate and gift tax exemption in the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act caused a 38.6% reduction in postmortem inflows into trust, which suggests that many family foundations are used to reduce estate taxes. These findings contribute to our understanding of inter-generational wealth inequality.

Institutional investors in single-family housing markets are often represented as worsening household well-being. We document the growth of single-family REITs (SFRs) and their (non-)effects on housing markets by constructing a novel dataset of SFRs' underlying properties. SFRs purchase properties in neighborhoods encircling city centers, where housing supply is more elastic, and with populations facing homeownership barriers. Using a spatial differences empirical strategy, SFR growth relates to increased housing supply, lower mortgage approval rates, and modest price increases. These findings likely capture SFRs' selection of neighborhoods rather than causal effects. SFR asset returns mirror representative housing portfolios despite their concentrated holdings.