We develop a method for identifying and quantifying the fiscal channels that help finance government spending shocks. We define fiscal shocks as surprises in defense spending and show that they are more precisely identified when defense stock data are used in addition to aggregate macroeconomic...

We measure credit risk premia - prices for bearing corporate default risk in excess of expected default losses - using Markit CDS and Moody's Analytics EDF data. We find dramatic variation over time in credit risk premia, with peaks in 2002, during the global financial crisis of 2008-09, and in...

Prior to the subprime crisis, mortgage brokers originated about 65% of all subprime mortgages. Yet little is known about their behavior during the runup to the crisis. Using data from New Century Financial Corporation, we find that brokers earned an average revenue of $5,300 per funded loan. We...

We document four similarities between American human healthcare and American pet care: (i) rapid growth in spending as a share of GDP over the last two decades; (ii) strong income-spending gradient; (iii) rapid growth in the employment of healthcare providers; and (iv) similar propensity for...

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) authorized the largest expansion of public health insurance in the U.S. since the mid-1960s. We exploit ACA-induced changes in the discontinuity in coverage at age 65 using a regression discontinuity based design to examine effects of the expansion on health...