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Working Paper
When is the Fiscal Multiplier High? A Comparison of Four Business Cycle Phases
We synthesize the recent, at times conflicting, empirical literature regarding whether fiscal policy is more effective during certain points in the business cycle. Evidence of state dependence in the multiplier depends critically on how the business cycle is defined. Estimates of the fiscal multiplier do not change when the unemployment rate is above or below its trend. However, we find that the multiplier is higher when the unemployment rate is increasing relative to when it is decreasing. This result holds using both a long time-series at the U.S. national level and for a panel of U.S. ...
Working Paper
Scenario-based Quantile Connectedness of the U.S. Interbank Liquidity Risk Network
We characterize the U.S. interbank liquidity risk network based on a supervisory dataset, using a scenario-based quantile network connectedness approach. In terms of methodology, we consider a quantile vector autoregressive model with unobserved heterogeneity and propose a Bayesian nuclear norm estimation method. A common factor structure is employed to deal with unobserved heterogeneity that may exhibit endogeneity within the network. Then we develop a scenario-based quantile network connectedness framework by accommodating various economic scenarios, through a scenario-based moving average ...
Working Paper
The Local Fiscal Multiplier of Intergovernmental Grants: Evidence from Federal Medicaid Assistance to States
Advocates of Medicaid expansion argue that federal Medicaid assistance to states fosters economic activity, generating positive local multiplier effects. Furthermore, during economic downturns, Congress regularly tweaks federal match rates for state Medicaid spending – including during the COVID-19 public health emergency – in order to assist states. Despite heavy reliance on Medicaid funding formulas, identifying the economic effect of these federal transfers has proved challenging. This is because federal Medicaid assistance (to states) is endogenous, since funding levels are correlated ...
Working Paper
Evidence on the Production of Cognitive Achievement from Moving to Opportunity
This paper performs a subgroup analysis on the effect of receiving a Moving to Opportunity (MTO) housing voucher on test scores. I find evidence of heterogeneity by number of children in the household in Boston, gender in Chicago, and race/ethnicity in Los Angeles. To study the mechanisms driving voucher effect heterogeneity, I develop a generalized Rubin Causal Model and propose an estimator to identify transition-specific Local Average Treatment Effects (LATEs) of school and neighborhood quality. Although I cannot identify such LATEs with the MTO data, the analysis demonstrates that ...
Working Paper
Does Medicaid Generosity Affect Household Income?
Almost all recent literature on Medicaid and labor supply has used Affordable Care Act (ACA)-induced Medicaid eligibility expansions in various states as natural experiments. Estimated effects on employment and earnings differ widely due to differences in the scope of eligibility expansion across states and are potentially subject to biases due to policy endogeneity. Using a Regression Kink Design (RKD) framework, this paper takes a uniquely different approach to the identification of the effect of Medicaid generosity on household income. Both state-level data and March CPS data from ...
Working Paper
Risk-Shifting, Regulation, and Government Assistance
This paper examines an episode when policy response to a financial crisis effectively incentivized financial institutions to reallocate their portfolios toward safe assets. Following a shift to a regime of enhanced regulation and scaled-down public assistance during the savings and loan crisis in 1989, I find that thrifts with a high probability of failure increased their composition of safe assets relative to thrifts with a low probability of failure. The findings also show a shift to safe assets among stock thrifts relative to mutual thrifts, thereby providing evidence of risk-shifting from ...
Working Paper
Modelling Dependence in High Dimensions with Factor Copulas
his paper presents flexible new models for the dependence structure, or copula, of economic variables based on a latent factor structure. The proposed models are particularly attractive for relatively high dimensional applications, involving fifty or more variables, and can be combined with semiparametric marginal distributions to obtain flexible multivariate distributions. Factor copulas generally lack a closed-form density, but we obtain analytical results for the implied tail dependence using extreme value theory, and we verify that simulation-based estimation using rank statistics is ...
Working Paper
A distinction between causal effects in structural and rubin causal models
Structural Causal Models define causal effects in terms of a single Data Generating Process (DGP), and the Rubin Causal Model defines causal effects in terms of a model that can represent counterfactuals from many DGPs. Under these different definitions, notationally similar causal effects make distinct claims about the results of interventions to the system under investigation: Structural equations imply conditional independencies in the data that potential outcomes do not. One implication is that the DAG of a Rubin Causal Model is different from the DAG of a Structural Causal Model. Another ...
Working Paper
Collaboration in Bipartite Networks, with an Application to Coauthorship Networks
This paper studies the impact of collaboration on research output. First, we build a micro founded model for scientific knowledge production, where collaboration between researchers is represented by a bipartite network. The equilibrium of the game incorporates both the complementarity effect between collaborating researchers and the substitutability effect between concurrent projects of the same researcher. Next, we develop a Bayesian MCMC procedure to estimate the structural parameters, taking into account the endogenous matching of researchers and projects. Finally, we illustrate the ...
Working Paper
Is \"Fintech\" Good for Small Business Borrowers? Impacts on Firm Growth and Customer Satisfaction
?Fintech? is a rapidly expanding segment of the financial market that is receiving much attention from investors and increasing regulatory scrutiny. While the attention is rising, very little is known about the performance of these lending sources on the outcomes of small businesses that make use of them. The Federal Reserve?s 2015 Small Business Credit Survey has data on the experiences of business owners with this new funding source and can provide some useful insights into this expanding sector, if compositional differences among the businesses that get bank loans, those that get fintech ...