We study changes in markups across 72 product markets from 2006 to 2018. A growing literature has documented a rise in markups over time using a production function approach; we instead employ the standard microeconomic method, which is to estimate demand and then invert firms’ first-order...

This paper discusses concentration in consumer credit markets with a focus on fintech lenders and residential mortgages. We present evidence that shows that concentration among fintech lenders is significantly higher than that for bank lenders and other nonbank lenders. The data also show that...

We observe empirical differences between races across various macroeconomic variables for the White, Black, Asian, and Hispanic populations in the U.S. For instance, the Black unemployment rate in the U.S. is more often than not double the White unemployment rate. In this paper, I treat nine...

We propose a new conceptual framework for monetary policy transmission through shadow banks in the mortgage market that highlights the role of mortgage servicing in generating non-deposit funds for lending. We document that mortgage servicing acts as a natural hedge against interest rate shocks...

We document the prevalence of promotional pricing of credit card debt in the U.S. and develop an analytic framework to study how interest rates on multiperiod credit line contracts should be set when debt is unsecured and defaultable. We show that according to the basic theory of unsecured...

Lowering a borrower’s interest rate is one of the most effective ways to reduce a borrower’s debt burden. Mortgage refinancing offers a chance to shift debt balances from high-interest loans into a low-interest mortgage through “cashing out” some of the home’s equity. Borrowers could...

The political process in the United States appears to be highly polarized: Data show that the political positions of legislators have diverged substantially, while the largest campaign contributions come from the most extreme donor groups and are directed to the most extreme candidates. Is the...

We study how advancements in automation technology affect the division of aggregate income between capital and labor in the context of long-run growth. Our analysis focuses on the fundamental trade-off between the labor-displacing effect of automation and its positive productivity effect in an...

We study immigrant founders of venture-capital backed firms using a new and detailed data set that we assemble on the backgrounds of founders. Immigrant founders have been critical to the entrepreneurial ecosystem, accounting for roughly 20% of all venture capital-backed founders over the past...

We assess the causal impact of epidemic-induced lockdowns on health and macroeconomic outcomes and measure the trade-off between containing the spread of an epidemic and economic activity. To do so, we estimate an epidemiological model with time-varying parameters and use its output as...