Financial constraints can cause firms to reduce product quality when quality is difficult to observe. We test this hypothesis in the context of medical choices at hospitals. Using heart attacks and child deliveries, we ask whether hospitals shift towards more profitable treatment options after a...

This paper examines how the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the largest investors in subprime private-label mortgage-backed securities (PLS), influenced the risk characteristics and prices of the deals in which they participated. To identify the causal effect...

Ten years after the financial crisis of 2008, there is widespread agreement that the boom in mortgage lending and its subsequent reversal were at the core of the Great Recession. We survey the existing evidence, which suggests that inflated house-price expectations across the economy played a...

This paper addresses two critiques by Mian and Sufi (2015a, 2015b) that were released in response to the results documented in Adelino, Schoar and Severino (2015). We confirm that none of the results in our previous paper are affected by the issues put forward in these critiques; in particular...

This paper highlights the importance of middle-class and high-FICO borrowers for the mortgage crisis. Contrary to popular belief, which focuses on subprime and poor borrowers, we show that mortgage originations increased for borrowers across all income levels and FICO scores. The relation...

This paper addresses two critiques by Mian and Sufi (2015a, 2015b) that were released in response to the results documented in Adelino, Schoar and Severino (2015). We confirm that none of the results in our previous paper are affected by the issues put forward in these critiques; in particular...