Two in five Americans have medical debt, nearly half of whom owe at least $2,500. Concerned by this burden, governments and private donors have undertaken large, high-profile efforts to relieve medical debt. We partnered with RIP Medical Debt to conduct two randomized experiments that relieved...

We use detailed micro data to document a causal response of local retail price to changes in house prices, with elasticities of 15%-20% across housing booms and busts. Notably, these price responses are largest in zip codes with many homeowners, and non-existent in zip codes with mostly renters....

The optimal investment to mitigate climate change crucially depends on the discount rate used to evaluate the investment’s uncertain future benefits. The appropriate discount rate is a function of the horizon over which these benefits accrue and the riskiness of the investment. In this paper,...

The recent house price experiences within an individual’s social network affect her perceptions of the attractiveness of property investments, and through this channel have large effects on her housing market activity. Our data combine anonymized social network information from Facebook with...

We explore the design of climate stress tests to assess and manage macro-prudential risks from climate change in the financial sector. We review the climate stress scenarios currently employed by regulators, highlighting the need to (i) consider many transition risks as dynamic policy choices;...

We survey 861 finance academics, professionals, and public sector regulators and policy economists about climate finance topics. They identify regulatory risk as the top climate risk to businesses and investors over the next five years, but they view physical risks as the top risk over the next...

We explore the sources of racial disparities in small business lending by studying the $806 billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which was designed to support small business jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic. PPP loans were administered by private lenders but federally guaranteed, largely...

We analyze how investor expectations about economic growth and stock returns changed during the February-March 2020 stock market crash induced by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as during the subsequent partial stock market recovery. We surveyed retail investors who are clients of Vanguard at...

We use aggregated data from Facebook to study the structure of social networks across European regions. Social connectedness declines strongly in geographic distance and at country borders. Historical borders and unions — such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Czechoslovakia, and East/West...

We use anonymized data from Facebook to construct a new measure of the pairwise social connectedness between 180 countries and 332 European regions. We find that two countries trade more with each other when they are more socially connected and when they share social connections with a similar...