This paper studies how credit guarantee and employment protection programs interact in assisting firms during crises times. The paper analyzes how these government programs influence credit allocation, indebtedness, and risk at both the micro and macro levels. The programs provide different...

Prior studies debating the effects of changes to the minimum wage concentrate on impacts on household income and spending or employment. We extend this debate by examining the impact of changes to the minimum wage on expenses associated with shelter, a previously unexplored area. Increases in...

The main rationale for policy intervention in debt renegotiation is to enhance such activity when foreclosures are perceived to be inefficiently high. We examine the ability of the government to influence debt renegotiation by empirically evaluating the effects of the 2009 Home Affordable...

We evaluate the effects of the 2009 Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) that provided intermediaries with sizeable financial incentives to renegotiate mortgages. HAMP increased intensity of renegotiations and prevented substantial number of foreclosures but reached just one-third of its...

We evaluate the effects of the 2009 Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) that provided intermediaries with sizeable financial incentives to renegotiate mortgages. HAMP increased intensity of renegotiations and prevented substantial number of foreclosures but reached just one-third of its...

Using loan-level mortgage data merged with consumer credit records, we examine the ability of the government to impact mortgage refinancing activity and spur consumption by focusing on the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP). The policy relaxed housing equity constraints by extending...

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has halted economic activity worldwide, hurting firms and pushing them toward bankruptcy. This paper provides a unified framework to organize the policy debate related to firm financing during the downturn, centered along four main points. First, the economic...

We examine the effects of pandemic risk factors and the Federal government's Payment Protection Program (PPP) on the performance of securitized commercial mortgages. Using administrative data that allow us to observe county-level variation in mortgage performance by property type, we find that...

We study the distribution of savings from mortgage refinancing across income groups during the COVID-19 pandemic. Between February and June 2020, the difference in savings from refinancing between high- and low-income borrowers was 10 times higher than before. This was the result of two factors:...

Using establishment-level employment and operating data, we examine the impact of the Indian government's employment guarantee program on labor and firm behavior. We exploit the staggered implementation of the program for identification and find that the program led to a 10% reduction in...