Using a century of data, we show that Treasury convenience yield and inflation comove positively during the inflationary 1970s-1980s, but negatively pre-WWII and post-2000. An inflation decomposition reveals that higher supply inflation predicts higher convenience, while lower demand inflation...

California has the highest Earned Income Tax (EITC) supplement to the federal EITC, with an 85% supplement rate. However, we find that despite the apparent generosity of the California EITC, there is no employment effect on less-skilled single mothers, in sharp contrast to the evidence of...

We show that the stock market price reaction to monetary policy surprises upon announcements of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is explained mostly by changes in the default-free term structure of yields, not by changes in the equity premium. We reach this conclusion based on a new...

Recent studies have concluded that state laws legalizing medical marijuana can reduce deaths from opioid overdoses. Using data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, a survey uniquely suited to assessing drug misuse, we examine the relationship between recreational marijuana laws...

This paper studies the impact of career concerns on technological change by analyzing the adoption of digital cinematography in the US motion picture industry. This setting allows us to collect rich data on the adoption of this new technology at the project-level (i.e., movie) as well as on the...

We estimate the causal effect of emergency credit on households' finances after a negative shock. To do so, we link application data from the U.S. Federal Disaster Loan program, which provides loans to households that have uninsured damages from a federally-declared natural disaster, to a panel...

In the long run, we are all dead. Nonetheless, when studying the short-run dynamics of economic models, it is crucial to consider boundary conditions that govern long-run, forward-looking behavior, such as transversality conditions. We demonstrate that machine learning (ML) can automatically...

Analyzing the universe of federal environmental regulations in the U.S., we construct a measure of regulations--direct taxes on pollution. Analyzing the universe of firms' investor disclosures, we construct a measure of material environmental concerns--indirect taxes on pollution. These two...

The rich tend to support policies favoring the affluent and are over-represented among both voters and legislators. This paper investigates whether these correlations reflect causal effects of wealth by leveraging random, positive wealth shocks in the form of lottery prizes. Compared to suitably...

We provide new evidence on the causal effect of unearned income on consumption, balance sheets, and financial outcomes by exploiting an experiment that randomly assigned 1000 individuals to receive $1000 per month and 2000 individuals to receive $50 per month for three years. The transfer...