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Report
Parsing the content of bank supervision
We measure bank supervision using the database of supervisory issues, known as matters requiring attention or immediate attention, raised by Federal Reserve examiners to banking organizations. The volume of supervisory issues increases with banks? asset size, especially for the largest and most complex banks, and decreases with profitability and the quality of the loan portfolio. Stressed banks are faster at resolving issues, but all else equal, resolving new issues takes longer the more issues a bank faces, which may suggest capacity constraints in addressing multiple supervisory issues. ...
Report
Bad credit, no problem? Credit and labor market consequences of bad credit reports
Credit reports are used in nearly all consumer lending decisions and, increasingly, in hiring decisions in the labor market, but the impact of a bad credit report is largely unknown. We study the effects of credit reports on financial and labor market outcomes using a difference-in-differences research design that compares changes in outcomes over time for Chapter 13 filers, whose personal bankruptcy flags are removed from credit reports after seven years, to changes for Chapter 7 filers, whose personal bankruptcy flags are removed from credit reports after ten years. Using credit bureau ...
Discussion Paper
A Peek behind the Curtain of Bank Supervision
Since the financial crisis, bank regulatory and supervisory policies have changed dramatically both in the United States (Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act) and abroad (Third Basel Accord). While these shifts have occasioned much debate, the discussion surrounding supervision remains limited because most supervisory activity? both the amount of supervisory attention and the demands for corrective action by supervisors?is confidential. Drawing on our recent staff report ?Parsing the Content of Bank Supervision,? this post provides a peek behind the scenes of bank ...
Report
MBS ratings and the mortgage credit boom
We study credit ratings on subprime and Alt-A mortgage-backed-securities (MBS) deals issued between 2001 and 2007, the period leading up to the subprime crisis. The fraction of highly rated securities in each deal is decreasing in mortgage credit risk (measured either ex ante or ex post), suggesting that ratings contain useful information for investors. However, we also find evidence of significant time variation in risk-adjusted credit ratings, including a progressive decline in standards around the MBS market peak between the start of 2005 and mid-2007. Conditional on initial ratings, we ...
Report
The Great Equalizer: Medicare and the Geography of Consumer Financial Strain
We use a five percent sample of Americans’ credit bureau data, combined with a regression discontinuity approach, to estimate the effect of universal health insurance at age 65—when most Americans become eligible for Medicare—at the national, state, and local level. We find a 30 percent reduction in debt collections—and a two-thirds reduction in the geographic variation in collections—with limited effects on other financial outcomes. The areas that experienced larger reductions in collections debt at age 65 were concentrated in the Southern United States, and had higher shares of ...
Discussion Paper
Medicare and Financial Health across the United States
Consumer financial strain varies enormously across the United States. One pernicious source of financial strain is debt in collections—debt that is more than 120 days past due and that has been sold to a collections agency. In Massachusetts, the average person has less than $100 in collections debt, while in Texas, the average person has more than $300. In this post, we discuss our recent staff report that exploits the fact that virtually all Americans are universally covered by Medicare at 65 to show that health insurance not only improves financial health on average, but also is a major ...
Report
Gender representation in economics across topics and time: evidence from the NBER
We document the representation of female economists on the conference programs at the NBER Summer Institute from 2001 to 2016. Over the 2013-16 period, women made up 20.6 percent of all authors on scheduled papers. However, there was large dispersion across programs, with the share of female authors ranging from 7.3 percent to 47.7 percent. While the average share of women rose slightly?from 18.5 percent in 2001-04?a persistent gap between the finance, macroeconomics, and microeconomics subfields remains, with women representing 14.4 percent of authors in finance, 16.3 percent of authors in ...