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Jel Classification:H81 

Working Paper
The Effects of the 1930s HOLC \"Redlining\" Maps

In the wake of the Great Depression, the Federal government created new institutions such as the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) to stabilize housing markets. As part of that effort, the HOLC created residential security maps for over 200 cities to grade the riskiness of lending to neighborhoods. We trace out the effects of these maps over the course of the 20th and into the early 21st century by linking geocoded HOLC maps to both Census and modern credit bureau data. Our analysis looks at the difference in outcomes between residents living on a lower graded side versus a higher graded ...
Working Paper Series , Paper WP-2017-12

Working Paper
The Long-Run Effects of the 1930s HOLC “Redlining” Maps on Place-Based Measures of Economic Opportunity and Socioeconomic Success

We estimate the long-run effects of the 1930s Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) redlining maps on census tract-level measures of socioeconomic status and economic opportunity from the Opportunity Atlas (Chetty et al. 2018). We use two identification strategies to identify the long-run effects of differential access to credit along HOLC boundaries. The first compares cross-boundary differences along actual HOLC boundaries to a comparison group of boundaries that had similar pre-existing differences as the actual boundaries. A second approach uses a statistical model to identify boundaries ...
Working Paper Series , Paper WP-2020-33

Working Paper
Bank Incentives and the Effect of the Paycheck Protection Program

We assess the role of banks in the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a large and unprecedented small-business support program instituted as a response to the COVID-19 crisis in the United States. In 2020, the PPP administered more than $525 billion in loans and grants to small businesses through the banking system. First, we provide empirical evidence of heterogeneity in the allocation of PPP loans. Firms that were larger and less affected by the COVID-19 crisis received loans earlier, even in a within-bank analysis. Second, we develop a model of PPP allocation through banks that is ...
Working Papers , Paper 21-15

Working Paper
Optimal Bailouts in Banking and Sovereign Crises

We study optimal bailout policies amidst banking and sovereign crises. Our model features sovereign borrowing with limited commitment, where domestic banks hold government debt and extend credit to the private sector. Bank capital shocks can trigger banking crises, prompting the government to consider extending guarantees over bank assets. This poses a trade-off: Larger bailouts relax financial frictions and increase output, but increase fiscal needs and default risk (creating a ‘diabolic loop’). Optimal bailouts exhibit clear properties. The fraction of banking losses the bailouts cover ...
Globalization Institute Working Papers , Paper 406

Working Paper
Optimal Allocation of Relief Funds: The Case of the Paycheck Protection Program

The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) was a large and unprecedented small-business support program that allocated $800 billion in loans and grants to small businesses following the onset of the COVID-19 crisis. This paper explores the optimal allocation of funds across firms and the distortions caused by allocating these funds through banks. We show that it can be optimal to allocate funds to the least or most affected firms depending on the underlying distribution of the shock that firms face, the firms’ financial position, and the total budget available for the program. In the model, as ...
Working Papers , Paper 21-16

Working Paper
Navigating Higher Education Insurance: An Experimental Study on Demand and Adverse Selection

We conduct a survey-based experiment with 2,776 students at a non-profit university to analyze income insurance demand in education financing. We offered students a hypothetical choice: either a federal loan with income-driven repayment or an income-share agreement (ISA), with randomized framingof downside protections. Emphasizing income insurance increased ISA uptake by 43%. We observe that students are responsive to changes in contract terms and possible student loan cancellation, which is evidence of preference adjustment or adverse selection. Our results indicate that framing specific ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2024-024

Working Paper
Explaining the Life Cycle of Bank-Sponsored Money Market Funds: An Application of the Regulatory Dialectic

In this paper, we present empirical evidence of the regulatory dialectic in the prime institutional money market fund (PI-MMF) industry. The “regulatory dialectic”, developed by Kane (1977, 1981), describes how banks and regulators react to each other. For decades, a cap on commercial deposit interest rates fueled dramatic growth in bank-sponsored PI-MMFs as a form of shadow banking. During the growth period, banks with more commercial deposits were more likely to enter the PI-MMF industry in an effort to keep their commercial customers in affiliated subsidiaries. However, the 2008 crisis ...
Research Working Paper , Paper RWP 24-01

Working Paper
The Tail That Wagged the Dog: What Explains the Persistent Employment Effect of the 10-Day PPP Funding Delay?

This study explores the mechanisms explaining the large, persistent effect of the 10-day funding delay in the 2020 Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) on employment recovery during the COVID-19 pandemic, as estimated by Doniger and Kay (2021). We find that the top 1 percent of urban counties by population fully account for the significant effect of the delay on county-level employment. The strong correlation between worse loan delay and slower employment growth in these counties is due to a factor commonly omitted from analyses: The nature of business and the high rate of human interactions in ...
Working Papers , Paper 23-6

Journal Article
The Main Street Lending Program

The Main Street Lending Program was created to support credit to small and medium-sized businesses and nonprofit organizations that were harmed by the pandemic, particularly those that were unsupported by other pandemic-response programs. It was the most direct involvement in the business loan market by the Federal Reserve since the 1930s and 1940s. Main Street operated by buying 95 percent participations in standardized loans from lenders (mostly banks) and sharing the credit risk with them. It would end up supporting loans to more than 2,400 borrowers and co-borrowers across the United ...
Economic Policy Review , Volume 28 , Issue 1

Report
Student Debt and Default: The Role of For-Profit Colleges

For-profit providers have become an important fixture of U.S. higher education markets. Students who attend for-profit institutions take on more educational debt and are more likely to default on their student loans than those attending similarly selective public schools. Because for-profits tend to serve students from more disadvantaged backgrounds, it is important to isolate the causal effect of for-profit enrollment on student debt and repayment outcomes as well as the educational and labor market mechanisms that drive any such effects. We approach this problem using a novel instrument ...
Staff Reports , Paper 811

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Joaquim, Gustavo 4 items

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