Contract enforceability in financial markets often depends on the aggregate actions of agents. For example, high default rates in credit markets can delay legal enforcement or reduce the value of collateral, incentivizing even more defaults and potentially affecting credit supply. We develop a...

Empirical evidence suggests that widespread financial distress, by disrupting enforcement of credit contracts, can be self-propagatory and adversely affect the supply of credit. We propose a unifying theory that models the interplay between enforcement, borrower default decisions, and the...

We study the negative feedback loop between the aggregate default rate and the efficacy of enforcement in a model of debt-financed entrepreneurial activity. The novel feature of our model is that enforcement capacity is accumulated ex ante and thus subject to depletion ex post. We characterize...

A major overhaul of the property tax system in 2013 in the city of Philadelphia has generated significant variations in the amount of property taxes across properties. This exogenous policy shock provides a unique opportunity to identify the causal effects of gentrification, which is often...

Philadelphia’s Actual Value Initiative, adopted in 2013, creates a unique opportunity for us to test whether reassessments at short intervals to true market value and taxing by such values improve equity. Based on a difference-in-differences framework using parcel-level data matched with...

We quantify the role of heterogeneity in households’ financial constraints in explaining the large decline in consumption between 2006 and 2009. Using household-level data, we show that in addition to a direct effect of changes in house prices, there are sizable indirect effects from general...

We investigate the effect of declining house prices on household consumption behavior during 2006-2009. We use an individual-level dataset that has detailed information on borrower characteristics, mortgages and credit risk. Proxying consumption by individual-level auto loan originations, we...

This paper estimates the value of the too-big-to-fail (TBTF) subsidy. Using data from the merger boom of 1991-2004, the authors find that banking organizations were willing to pay an added premium for mergers that would put them over the asset sizes that are commonly viewed as the thresholds for...

We study the evolution of US mortgage credit supply during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the mortgage market experienced a historic boom in 2020, we show there was also a large and sustained increase in intermediation markups that limited the pass-through of low rates to borrowers. Markups...

The distribution of combined loan-to-value ratios (CLTVs) for purchase mortgages has been remarkably stable in the U.S. over the last 25 years. But the source of high-CLTV loans changed during the housing boom of the 2000s, with private securitization replacing FHA and VA loans directly...