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Working Paper
Unintended Consequences of Unemployment Insurance Benefits: The Role of Banks
We use disaggregated U.S. data and a border discontinuity design to show that more generous unemployment insurance (UI) policies lower bank deposits. We test several channels that could explain this decline and find evidence consistent with households lowering their precautionary savings. Since deposits are the largest and most stable source of funding for banks, the decrease in deposits affects bank lending. Banks that raise deposits in states with generous UI policies squeeze their small business lending. Furthermore, counties that are served by these banks experience a higher unemployment ...
Working Paper
Unemployment Insurance and Macro-Financial (In)Stability
We identify and study two mechanisms that can overturn the stabilizing effects of unemployment insurance (UI) policies. First, households in economies with more generous UI reduce their precautionary savings and increase their mortgage debt. Second, the share of mortgages, especially those with higher loan-to-income ratios, increases on bank balance sheets. As a result, both bank and household balance sheets become more vulnerable to adverse shocks, which deepens recessions. We demonstrate the importance of these channels by employing a quantitative heterogeneous-agent general equilibrium ...