The government is facing a severe shortage of skilled workers. The conventional wisdom in branches of policy and public administration is that the shortage is driven by low salaries that are not competitive for attracting top talent. Using longitudinal data on high skilled workers between 1993...

Abstract This paper explores the causal effect of foreclosure on individual well-being and social capital. Using plausibly exogenous variation in the timing of interest rate changes on different types of adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs), we find that a 10% rise in foreclosures is associated with...

We exploit the staggered and discontinuous changes in interest rates among adjustable rate mortgages to identify the effects of foreclosures independently of housing prices. First, interest rate resets predict foreclosure, accounting for up to 18% of the change in foreclosures. Second, a 10%...

Did private mortgage securitization contribute causally to the recent subprime lending boom, or was it simply a slightly more convenient way to finance lending that would have occurred anyway? We exploit a natural experiment in which the S&P rating agency increased costs of securitizing specific...