We study the growth of “iBuyers,” real estate companies with online acquisition platforms that buy and sell residential real estate, to provide novel evidence on the effects and challenges of making housing markets more liquid. iBuyers act as liquidity providers, buying low and selling high,...

Bank balance sheet lending is commonly viewed as the predominant form of lending. We document and study two margins of adjustment that are usually absent from this view using microdata in the $10 trillion U.S. residential mortgage market. We first document the limits of the shadow bank...

This paper argues that firms have an informational advantage over consumers in selecting arbitrators in consumer arbitration. We document how the selection process impacts arbitration outcomes by studying roughly 9,000 consumer arbitration cases in the securities industry. Securities disputes...

We study the interaction of search and application approval in credit markets. We combine a unique dataset, which details search behavior for a large sample of mortgage borrowers, with loan application and rejection decisions. Our data reveal substantial dispersion in mortgage rates and search...

Is bank capital structure designed to extract deposit subsidies? We address this question by studying capital structure decisions of shadow banks: intermediaries that provide banking services but are not funded by deposits. We assemble, for the first time, call report data for shadow banks which...

We study the frictions in dealer-intermediation in residential real estate through the lens of "iBuyers," technology entrants, who purchase and sell residential real estate through online platforms. iBuyers supply liquidity to households by allowing them to avoid a lengthy sale process. They...

We follow a representative panel of US borrowers to study the suspension of household debt payments (debt forbearance) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Between March and October of 2020, loans worth $2 trillion entered forbearance. On average, cumulative payments missed per individual in...