Using administrative account level data, we study the largest financial inclusion program in India that led to 255 million new bank account openings. About 77% of these accounts maintain a positive balance. While the initial usage remains quite infrequent, it gradually converges to that of...

Does financing respond to changes in productive opportunities even for the world's poor? We shed light by examining the response of private bank financing to a rural road-building program in India. The program prioritized roads for villages above explicit population thresholds, allowing us to...

Does the flow of financing respond to changes in productive opportunities even for the world's poor? We answer this question by examining the response of private bank financing to a shock to the rural road network in India, which brought road access to hitherto unconnected villagers. The program...

This paper shows, for the first time, how liquidity infusions from government bailouts affect loan modification in the mortgage market. The design of the Pooling and Service Agreement leads mortgage servicers to prefer foreclosure to modification when the servicers are liquidity constrained....

Financially constrained borrowers have the incentive to influence the appraisal process in order to increase borrowing or reduce the interest rate. We document that the average valuation bias for residential refinance transactions is above 5%. The bias is larger for highly leveraged...

This paper empirically tests information asymmetries and learning in global commercial real estate markets. We find that foreign investors pay a premium of 3.6%, on average, relative to local investors for comparable properties in local markets. The premiums reflect information disadvantages of...