With the increasing concern with regards to reducing poverty in the world, lowering transaction costs within the value chain is one of the key elements to ensuring growth in agriculture which will in turn have a significant impact in reducing poverty. This paper presents the results of a study...

Modest differences in the interest rate at home purchase can have long-lasting effects on mortgagors. We use within-year variation in average interest rates at loan origination to instrument for contracted mortgage rates. For homeowners with negative equity, a 50bp increase in the national rate...

Using detailed micro-level data, we show that individuals' beliefs about climate change influence their choice and level of flood insurance coverage. Our empirical strategy exploits the heterogeneous impact of widening partisan polarization on climate change beliefs after the 2016 general...

In this paper I examine how servicer characteristics affect foreclosure rates of delinquent securitized mortgages. Using a sample of mortgages originated by IndyMac Bank and Countrywide Home Loan Servicing that underwent a change in servicer during the financial crisis period, I first show using...

We examine the effect of bank mergers on the price and availability of credit in the residential mortgage market. We find that, compared to non-acquiring banks in the same local market, acquiring banks that gain large market shares charge significantly higher interest rates but also lend larger...

We exploit anonymized administrative data provided by a major fintech platform to investigate whether using alternative data to assess borrowers' creditworthiness results in broader credit access. Comparing actual outcomes of the fintech platform’s model to counterfactual outcomes based on a...

Does salient information on social media influence individuals' economic decisions and beliefs? Using aggregated data from Facebook and a difference-in-differences strategy, I show that individuals who are socially connected to someone affected by Hurricane Harvey are more likely to purchase...

We exploit anonymized administrative data provided by a major fintech platform to investigate whether using alternative data to assess borrowers' creditworthiness results in broader credit access. Comparing actual outcomes of the fintech platform's model to counterfactual outcomes based on a...

The scope of this paper is the regulatory environment within which telecom operators and potential new entrants function, that is, a subset of the overall Regulatory Risk environment here described as the “Telecom Regulatory Environment” (TRE) that includes only the telecom-specific aspects....