We show how a regulatory disclosure of hidden debt can eliminate a large mispricing in housing. In a setting where homebuyers must combine several sources of debt, they are biased towards hidden loans, especially if they are young, or have no experience in financial investments or home...

We show that a regulatory disclosure of hidden debt eliminated a large mispricing in housing. In a setting where homebuyers must combine several sources of debt, they are biased towards hidden loans, especially if they are young, or have no experience in financial investments or home...

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...

We ask whether access to the internet increases participation in a workfare program in Indian villages, especially during a crisis. We exploit the exodus of migrant workers from cities to rural areas during the pandemic and phase-wise rollout of the internet for identification. Comparing...

This paper examines the impact of the recently passed JOBS Act on the behavior of market participants. Using the JOBS Act - which relaxed mandatory information disclosure requirements - as a natural experiment on firms' choices of the optimal mix of hard, accounting information and textual...

Using a unique sample of comparable online and in-person loan transactions, we study the determinants of arm's-length and inside lending focusing on the differential information content across debt types. We find that soft private information primarily underlies relationship lending whereas hard...

We examine the effect of direct mail (commonly referred to as junk mail) advertising on individual financial decisions by studying consumer choice of home equity debt contracts. Consistent with the theoretical predictions, we find that financial variables underlying the relative pricing of debt...

Every year over 20 states offer sales tax holidays (STHs) on specific items like clothes, shoes and other items to encourage consumption, effecting over 100 million consumers. We use a unique dataset of credit cards transaction to study the spending response to these holidays. Using a...

A number of studies have pointed to various mistakes that consumers might make in their consumption-saving and financial decisions. We utilize a unique market experiment conducted by a large U.S. bank to assess how systematic and costly such mistakes are in practice. The bank offered consumers a...

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...