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Jel Classification:G50 

Working Paper
Cost of Banking for LMI and Minority Communities

Bank accounts are critical for participation in the modern economy. However, these accounts frequently require maintenance fees and incur overdraft charges. We assess whether minimum account balances to avoid fees, account maintenance fee amounts, and non-sufficient funds charges are systematically different in LMI and majority-minority communities, and find that they are generally higher. For example, the minimum account balance to avoid fees in a non-interest checking account is about $50 higher in LMI Census tracts than in higher income tracts, and $75 higher in majority-minority tracts. ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2022-040

Working Paper
Suitability of a County-Level Income Definition for Analysis of Lower-Income Communities

This paper examines the costs and benefits of using a straightforward county-level income definition in the classification and study of lower-income communities. A definition based on population-weighted distribution of county-level median household incomes does a good job of identifying the most economically disadvantaged communities across a wide range of indicators. We show robustness to the use of different thresholds, levels of geography, and cost-of-living adjustments.
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2025-039

Discussion Paper
Climate Change and Consumer Finance: A Very Brief Literature Review

Extant research shows that climate change can impose significant costs on consumers’ wealth and finances. Both sea-level rise and flooding from hurricane events led to high price declines and thus wealth loss for homes in coastal areas or in disaster-struck areas, with effects lingering for a number of years in some cases. In terms of consumer finance, while the average consumer is not always significantly negatively affected by a disaster, the vulnerable groups (those with low credit scores and who are low income) can be severely affected, experiencing higher rates of delinquencies and ...
Consumer Finance Institute discussion papers , Paper 21-04

Working Paper
Does Access to Free Pre-Kindergarten Increase Maternal Labor Supply?

We evaluate the effects of free pre-kindergarten (Pre-K) programs on the labor force participation of mothers. We use variation in Pre-K rules across all U.S. states, including income eligibility requirements in some states. To estimate the causal effects of access to Pre-K on labor supply, we exploit the panel aspect of the monthly Current Population Survey between 2002 and 2019. Specifically, we look at the change in labor market behavior of women when their child becomes age-eligible for Pre-K, controlling for individual factors. We find that access to free Pre-K programs increases overall ...
Research Working Paper , Paper RWP 21-11

Working Paper
The Assessment Gap: Racial Inequalities in Property Taxation

We use panel data covering 118 million homes in the United States, merged with geolocation detail for 75,000 taxing entities, to document a nationwide "assessment gap" which leads local governments to place a disproportionate fiscal burden on racial and ethnic minorities. We show that holding jurisdictions and property tax rates fixed, black and Hispanic residents nonetheless face a 10-13% higher tax burden for the same bundle of public services. This assessment gap arises through two channels. First, property assessments are less sensitive to neighborhood attributes than market prices are. ...
Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers , Paper 34

Working Paper
Your Friends, Your Credit: Social Capital Measures Derived from Social Media and the Credit Market

Chetty et al. (2022a) introduced an array of social capital measures derived from Facebook friendships and found that one of these indicators, economic connectedness (EC), predicted upward income mobility well. Bricker and Li (2017) proposed the average credit score of a community's residents as an indicator of local social trust. We show in this paper that the average credit scores are robustly correlated with EC, negatively correlated with the friending-bias measure introduced in Chetty et al. (2022b), and predict economic mobility to a comparable extent after controlling for EC. The ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2023-048

Working Paper
The Effect of Liquidity Constraints on Labor Supply: Evidence from Interest Rate Ceilings

We exploit the spatiotemporal variation in US states’ interest rate ceilings on small-dollar loans to identify the effect of liquidity constraints on labor supply. Exogenously-capped interest rates lead to consumers being shut out of the market for cash loans. In response, labor supply increases by approximately 0.4 hours per week. We also find that the propensity to take personal leaves decreases. Labor supply, therefore, is used to overcome financial constraints, but is not the only method: the effect on earnings is less than many small-dollar loans, suggesting that borrowers employ ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2025-110

Working Paper
Does it Pay to Send Multiple Pre-Paid Incentives? Evidence from a Randomized Experiment

To encourage survey participation and improve sample representativeness, the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) offers an unconditional pre-paid monetary incentive and separate post-paid incentive upon survey completion. We conducted a pre-registered between-subject randomized control experiment within the 2022 SCF, with at least 1,200 households per experimental group, to examine whether changing the pre-paid incentive structure affects survey outcomes. We assess the effects of: (1) altering the total dollar value of the pre-paid incentive (“incentive effect”), (2) giving two identical ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2024-023

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Hsu, Joanne W. 5 items

Bachtell, Kate 4 items

Chang, Andrew C. 4 items

Ma, Eva 4 items

Sjoblom, Micah 4 items

Blascak, Nathan 3 items

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