Real estate markets are highly vulnerable to inflows of illicit wealth. The clandestine nature of dark money makes these activities difficult to detect and estimate. We exploit offshore data leaks – the Panama Papers – to study how associated individuals behave in housing transactions...

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...

Using big datasets from four diverse sources, of both suppliers and facilitators or recipients of digital payment platforms, we conduct a comprehensive analysis of the impact of unexpected demonetization in India on payment digitization. The drying-up of cash due to demonetization leads to a...

We utilize monthly individual-level financial data and item-level supermarket sales data to study how consumption responds to one of the costliest natural disasters in India. We find that consumption dropped by 11% during the disaster, 65% of which was recovered after the disaster. On average,...

Using a large representative sample of bank card transactions, this paper examines the impact of terrorist attacks on the household consumption structure choice between credit versus debit accounts. Compared with the baseline period, we document a daily increase of 0.19% more in the fraction of...

We utilize monthly individual-level financial data and item-level supermarket sales data to study how consumption responds to one of the costliest natural disasters in India. We find that consumption dropped by 11% during the disaster, 65% of which was recovered after the disaster. On average,...

Cybersecurity breaches pose a substantial privacy concern in the digital era. We investigate how customers respond to privacy leakage in multiple unexpected data breaches. Difference-in-differences estimates show that digital payments declined by 4.6% ~ 7.5% relative to cash payments immediately...

We use unique and proprietary data from a large Fintech lender to analyze whether alternative data captured from an individual's mobile phone (mobile/social footprint) can substitute for traditional credit bureau scores. Variables that measure a borrowers' digital presence, such as the number...

We show individuals investments chase stock index returns and are financed by foregoing consumption, even after controlling for individual-account level portfolio income effects and other high dimensional fixed effects. This effect only exists for positive stock index returns with no effects for...

This paper tests one specific monetary transmission mechanism through households: portfolio rebalancing. We use a unique panel dataset of household's credit and debit card spending, ATM withdrawals, financial investments into risky assets such as mutual funds and equities, as well as bank...