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Working Paper
Automated Credit Limit Increases and Consumer Welfare
In the United States, credit card companies frequently use machine learning algorithms to proactively raise credit limits for borrowers. In contrast, an increasing number of countries have begun to prohibit credit limit increases initiated by banks rather than consumers. In this paper, we exploit detailed regulatory micro data to examine the extent to which bank-initiated credit limit increases are directed towards individuals with revolving debt. We then develop a model that captures the costs and benefits of regulating proactive credit limit increases, which we use to quantify their ...
Report
Does Universal Occupational Licensing Recognition Improve Patient Access? Evidence from Healthcare Utilization
Optimizing physician labor supply has been an important policy issue in healthcare in the United States. One of the proposed solutions has been the universal licensing recognition (ULR), which allows out-of-state physicians to provide healthcare services without relicensing and increases the local labor supply of physicians. There has been no empirical analysis of the effect of such regulatory relaxation on the local labor supply and subsequent improvements of consumer welfare. In this study, we use the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System to investigate the effect of universal ...
Working Paper
Do long-haul truckers undervalue future fuel savings?
The U.S. federal government enacted fuel efficiency standards for medium and heavy trucks for the first time in September 2011. Rationales for using this policy tool typically depend upon frictions existing in the marketplace or consumers being myopic, such that vehicle purchasers undervalue the future fuel savings from increased fuel efficiency. We measure by how much long-haul truck owners undervalue future fuel savings by employing recent advances to the classic hedonic approach to estimate the distribution of willingness-to-pay for fuel efficiency. We find significant heterogeneity in ...
Report
Shadow Insurance
Liabilities ceded by life insurers to shadow reinsurers (i.e., affiliated and less regulated off-balance-sheet entities) grew from $11 billion in 2002 to $364 billion in 2012. Life insurers using shadow insurance, which capture half of the market share, ceded 25 cents of every dollar insured to shadow reinsurers in 2012, up from 2 cents in 2002. Our adjustment for shadow insurance reduces risk-based capital by 53 percentage points (or 3 rating notches) and raises default probabilities by a factor of 3.5. We develop a structural model of the life insurance industry and estimate the impact of ...
Working Paper
The Impact of Price Controls in Two-sided Markets : Evidence from US Debit Card Interchange Fee Regulation
We study the pricing of deposit accounts following a regulation that capped debit card interchange fees in the United States and provide the first empirical investigation of the link between interchange fees and granular deposit account prices. This link is broadly predicted by the theoretical literature on two-sided markets, but the nature and magnitude of price changes are key empirical issues. To examine the ways that banks adjusted their account prices in response to the regulatory cap on interchange fees, we exploit the cap's differential applicability across banks and account types, ...
Report
Nonlinear pricing with competition: the market for settling payments
The multiple payments settlement systems available in the United States differ on several dimensions. The Fedwire Funds Service, a utility that operates a U.S. large-value payments-settlement service, offers the fastest speed of settlement. Recognizing that payments differ in the urgency with which they need to be settled, Fedwire offers banks a decreasing block-price schedule. This approach allows Fedwire to price discriminate, charging high fees for urgent payments and low fees for less urgent ones. We analyze banks? demand for Fedwire Funds given this nonlinear scheme, taking into account ...
Working Paper
Information Production, Misconduct Effort, and the Duration of Corporate Fraud
We develop and test a model linking the duration of financial fraud to information produced by auditors and analysts and efforts by managers to conceal the fraud. Our empirical results suggest fraud termination is more likely in the quarter following the release of audited financial statements, especially when reports contain explanatory language, indicating auditors? observable signals reduce fraud duration. Analyst attention increases the likelihood of fraud termination, but the marginal effect beyond the first analyst is negative, possibly due to free riding and herding behavior impairing ...
Report
Do long-haul truckers undervalue future fuel savings?
The U.S. federal government enacted fuel efficiency standards for medium and heavy trucks for the first time in September 2011. Rationales for using this policy tool typically depend upon frictions existing in the marketplace or consumers being myopic, such that vehicle purchasers undervalue the future fuel savings from increased fuel efficiency. We measure by how much long-haul truck owners undervalue future fuel savings by employing recent advances to the classic hedonic approach to estimate the distribution of willingness-to-pay for fuel efficiency. We find significant heterogeneity in ...