COVID-19 has resulted not only in widespread illness and death, it has also upended most spheres of social life including the economic/financial one in that it has had large impacts on local economies, resulting in widespread job loss, job insecurity and loss of income. Employability, a...

This paper documents the macroeconomic effects of changes in downpayment requirements on mortgage loans in a model where investment is undertaken by collateral- constrained agents. I find that a permanent tightening in lending standards substantially lowers aggregate spending in the short run...

The COVID-19 pandemic risks exacerbating inequality in Asia. High frequency labor surveys show that the pandemic is having particularly adverse effects on younger workers, women and people that are more vulnerable. Pandemics have been shown to increase inequalities. As a result, income...

Despite record economic growth in the decade that followed the fall of the Taliban regime, poverty remained stubbornly high in Afghanistan, and especially so in regions that suffered less from conflict. This paper aims to explain this puzzle by combining a model of conflict intensity at the...

How does violent conflict affect the spread of Covid-19? In this paper we analyze how violent conflict influences the adoption of preventative measures and infection rate in a very poor, conflict-affected country, Burkina Faso. We use a unique panel of 1,919 households surveyed during the first...

We survey the literature in economics and related fields on the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and conflict behavior. We cover the effects of the pandemic on micro-level conflict (among individuals), macro-level conflict (interstate, intrastate, and extra-state), and the effect of...

We use responses to survey questions in the 2010 Italian Survey of Household Income and Wealth that ask consumers how much of an unexpected transitory income change they would consume. We find that the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) is 48 percent on average, and that there is substantial...

Is the observed large increase in consumer indebtedness since the 1980s beneficial for U.S. consumers? This paper quantitatively studies the macroeconomic and welfare implications of relaxing borrowing constraints when consumers exhibit a hyperbolic discounting preference. The model can capture...

This paper presents new survey evidence on workers' response to the 2011 payroll tax cuts. While workers intended to spend 10 to 18 percent of their tax-cut income, they reported actually spending 28 to 43 percent of the funds. This is higher than estimates from studies of recent tax cuts, and...

The empirical effectiveness of economic policies that operate theoretically through similar channels differs substantially. We document this fact by comparing an easy-to-grasp expectations-based policy, unconventional fiscal policy, with a policy whose implications are harder to understand by...