The traditional approaches to “cure” economic recessions are monetary and fiscal policies. Most economic crises are first addressed with monetary instruments, as the Federal Reserve’s extensive corporate bond purchasing program of March 24, 2020, has shown. However, when interest rates are...

Government outsourcing of services to private sector entities is increasingly common. The conventional wisdom ties governments’ outsourcing decisions to either an ideological preference for market-based solutions or to fiscal pressures; however, these conjectures have not been systematically...

The COVID-19 pandemic could result in large government interventions in the banking industry. To shed light on the possible consequences on market power, we rely on the experience of the global financial crisis and exploit granular data on government interventions in more than 800 banks across...

I utilize a novel data on proprietary servicer call transcripts to investigate strategic borrower responses to mortgage forbearance program (13% with only 1.5% unemployed) contained in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act. I document selective verification of unemployment...

The adoption of COVID-19 Contact Tracing Apps (CTAs) has been proposed as an important measure to contain the spread of COVID-19. Based on a cross-national dataset, this paper analyzes public perceptions towards CTAs and the factors that drive CTA acceptance in China, Germany, and the United...

Delay in the provision of Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans—due to insufficient initial funding under the CARES Act—substantially and persistently reduced employment. Delayed loans increased layoffs and labor force exit between April and May and reduced recalls throughout the summer....

This paper uses administrative data from a private payroll processor whose clients are primarily very small businesses (median 5 employees) to measure both which firms apply for financial relief through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and the effects of this financial relief. Conditional...

Screening requirements are common features of fraud and corruption mitigation efforts around the world. Yet imposing these requirements involves trade-offs between higher administrative costs, delayed benefits, and exclusion of genuine beneficiaries on one hand and lower fraud on the other. We...

Reportedly, firms often find it impossible to finance large and long-term projects despite positive net present values. Should governments step in and can their assistance be effective? This paper studies the case of public export credit guarantees in Germany. Covering the default risk of...

The Obama stimulus package has been less than a total success if one is to compare what was predicted to what has been delivered to date. The crux of the problem is that the economic planners have ignored or failed to take into account the secondary effects that increased government spending has...