The empirical effects of place-based tax incentive schemes designed to aid low income communities are unclear. While a growing number of studies find beneficial effects on employment, there is little investigation into other behaviors of households affected by such programs. We analyze the...

The importance of place of birth or residence on a host of economic outcomes cannot be overstated. The treatment of households in consumer bankruptcy appears to be no different. Despite the U.S. Bankruptcy Code being federal law, there is extreme geographic variation in the relative use of the...

Auto lenders were perhaps the biggest winners of the 2005 Bankruptcy Reform. Cars depreciate quickly, so borrowers often owe more than their car is worth. Prior to the Reform, these borrowers could reduce the principal on their auto loan to the market value of the car through a "cramdown" in...

Funke, Schularick, and Trebesch (2023) investigate the impact of populist leaders on GDP growth in 60 countries. They build an original dataset identifying populist presidents and prime ministers from 1900 to 2020. They then examine changes in countries' GDP growth rates following a populist...