Search Results
Journal Article
K-shaped Economy or Not? Evidence from a Payments Survey
Using transaction data from a payments survey in the United States, we analyze how consumers across income groups changed their spending between 2021 and 2025. We find that spending by consumers with high household income (fourth and fifth quintiles) grew substantially faster than spending by consumers with low household income (first to third quintiles), a pattern that holds across total spending, grocery spending, and spending on necessities. Both groups saw spending increases, but the gap in growth rates points to a widening of consumption inequality across the income distribution. Rather ...
Working Paper
Uncovering Retail Trading in Bitcoin: The Impact of COVID-19 Stimulus Checks
In April 2020, the US government sent economic impact payments (EIPs) directly to households, as part of its measures to address the COVID-19 pandemic. We characterize these stimulus checks as a wealth shock for households and examine their effect on retail trading in Bitcoin. We find a significant increase in Bitcoin buy trades for the modal EIP amount of $1,200. The rise in Bitcoin trading is highest among individuals without families and at exchanges catering to nonprofessional investors. We estimate that the EIP program has a significant but modest effect on the US dollar–Bitcoin ...
Working Paper
The Causal Effects of Expected Depreciations
We estimate the causal effects of a shift in the expected future exchange rate of a local currency against the US dollar on a representative sample of firms in an open economy. We survey a nationally representative sample of firms and provide the one-year-ahead nominal exchange rate forecast published by the local central bank to a random sub-sample of firm managers. The treatment is effective in shifting exchange rate and inflation expectations and perceptions. These effects are persistent and larger for non-exporting firms. Linking survey responses with administrative census data, we find ...
Working Paper
Social Network and Sentiment Contagion: Evidence from the Bitcoin Market
Using new data on social interactions and individual trading records in the Bitcoin market, we show that investor sentiment spreads across social connections. Investors systematically revise their beliefs about Bitcoin prices in the direction of average peer sentiment—even though that sentiment does not predict future prices. We document specific patterns in the diffusion of beliefs across networks, including evidence consistent with confirmation bias. Moreover, this social-sentiment contagion influences both individual trading decisions and overall market dynamics. Our novel measure of ...
Working Paper
The Impact of Labels on Real Asset Valuations
Expectations and sentiment of economic agents about financial prospects are both the drivers and the leading indicators of economic phenomena. This paper shows that neighborhood labels, frequently used in realtors’ property descriptions, have a causal impact on the demand for housing. Results indicate that appraised values, house prices and rents increased in minority neighborhoods upon removal of neighborhood labels. The underlying mechanism likely works through forming expectations about future growth in housing markets, as documented by the decrease in the rent-to-price ratio and lack of ...
Working Paper
Recency Effects in Perceived Uncertainty
Firms frequently revise not only their expectations, but also how uncertain they feel about those expectations. Using the U.S. Survey of Business Uncertainty, we study perceived uncertainty about firms’ own sales and employment growth. Reported uncertainty rises after larger revisions to firms’ point forecasts, with the strongest response to the most recent revision. This recency pattern remains visible outside elevated sectoral-volatility episodes. We develop a model in which agents learn about a constant-volatility process but recall older observations noisily. Noisy recall gives recent ...
Working Paper
Macroeconomic Expectations and Cognitive Noise
This paper examines forecast biases through cognitive noise, moving beyond the conventional view that frictions emerge solely from using external data. By extending Sims’s (2003) imperfect attention model to include imperfect memory, I propose a framework where cognitive constraints impact both external and internal information use. This innovation reveals horizon-dependent forecast sensitivity: short-term forecasts adjust sluggishly while long-term forecasts may overreact. I explore the macroeconomic impact of this behavior, showing how long-term expectations, heavily influenced by current ...
Working Paper
Model Uncertainty and the Pricing of Hurricane Risk in Florida
This paper examines how model uncertainty affects the price of homeowners insurance in Florida. We use unique data on expected loss rate projections from seven hurricane risk models approved by regulators for use in Florida property insurance rate filings to quantify model uncertainty. By combining these data with newly published information on local property insurance markets, we are able to empirically test the relationship between model uncertainty and insurance premiums across Florida ZIP codes and over time. Controlling for confounding variables and time-invariant latent factors that may ...
Working Paper
Improving the 30-Year Fixed-Rate Mortgage
The 30-year fixed-rate fully amortizing mortgage (or "traditional fixed-rate mortgage") was a substantial innovation when first developed during the Great Depression. However, it has three major flaws. First, because homeowner equity accumulates slowly during the first decade, homeowners are essentially renting their homes from lenders. With so little equity accumulation, many lenders require large down payments. Second, in each monthly mortgage payment, homeowners substantially compensate capital markets investors for the ability to prepay. The homeowner might have better uses for this ...
Working Paper
It's Not Who You Know—It's Who Knows You: Employee Social Capital and Firm Performance
We show that the social capital embedded in employees' networks contributes to firm performance. Using novel, individual-level network data, we measure a firm's social capital derived from employees' connections with external stakeholders. Our directed network data allow for differentiating those connections that know the employee and those that the employee knows. Results show that firms with more employee social capital perform better; the positive effect stems primarily from employees being known by others. We provide causal evidence exploiting the enactment of a government regulation that ...