Borrowing decisions affect most households, with large stakes and implications for research
subfields as varied as macroeconomics and industrial organization. I review theoretical and …

The existing evidence linking recessions to individual and population health presents a
puzzle. Some studies show that people who experience the kinds of labor market, housing …

We follow a representative panel of US borrowers to study the suspension of household
debt payments (debt forbearance) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Between March and …

We exploit variation in mortgage modifications to disentangle the impact of reducing long-
term obligations with no change in short-term payments (“wealth”), and reducing short-term …

There is mixed evidence on whether the marginal dollar spent on corporate social
responsibility is due to agency problems. We propose an approach by modeling how the …

We examine the effect of the Medicaid expansions under the 2010 Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act (ACA) on consumer financial outcomes using data from a major credit …

The fiscal policy response to the COVID‐19 crisis was swift and strong, in tandem with
monetary policy. Advanced economies (AEs) deployed a much larger fiscal response than …

This paper uses new data from the PSID to quantify the relative importance of negative
equity versus ability to pay, in driving mortgage defaults between 2009 and 2013. These …

We examine the ability of the government to impact mortgage refinancing activity and spur
consumption by focusing on the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) that relaxed …

This paper studies how financial inclusion affects wealth accumulation. Exploiting the US
interstate branching deregulation between 1994 and 2005, we find that an exogenous …