Cash Flows
Does Finance Make Us Less Social?
Henrik Cronqvist, Mitch Warachka & Frank Yu
Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
Informal risk sharing within social networks and formal financial contracts both enable households to manage risk. We find that financial contracting reduces participation in social networks. Specifically, increased crop insurance usage decreased local religious adherence and congregation membership in agricultural communities. Our identification utilizes the Federal Crop Insurance Reform Act of 1994 that doubled crop insurance usage nationally within a year, although changes in usage varied across counties. Difference-in-Difference and Spatial First Difference tests confirm that households substituted insurance for religiosity. This substitution was associated with reductions in crop diversification and crop yields, indicating an increase in moral hazard.
Was Pandemic Fiscal Relief Effective Fiscal Stimulus? Evidence from Aid to State and Local Governments
Jeffrey Clemens, Philip Hoxie & Stan Veuger
NBER Working Paper, June 2022
Abstract:
We use an instrumental-variables estimator reliant on variation in congressional representation to analyze the effects of federal aid to state and local governments across all four major pieces of COVID-19 response legislation. Through September 2021, we estimate that the federal government allocated $855,000 for each state or local government job-year preserved. Our baseline confidence interval allows us to rule out estimates of less than $433,000. Our estimates of effects on aggregate income and output are centered on zero and imply modest if any spillover effects onto the broader economy. We discuss aspects of the pandemic context, which include the surprising resilience of state and local tax revenues as well as of broader macroeconomic conditions, that may underlie the small employment and stimulative impacts we estimate in comparison with previous research.
Were Small Businesses More Likely to Permanently Close in the Pandemic?
Robert Fairlie et al.
NBER Working Paper, July 2022
Abstract:
Previous estimates indicate that COVID-19 led to a large drop in the number of operating businesses operating early in the pandemic, but surprisingly little is known on whether these shutdowns turned into permanent closures and whether small businesses were disproportionately hit. This paper provides the first analysis of permanent business closures using confidential administrative firm-level panel data covering the universe of businesses filing sales taxes from the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration. We find large increases in closures rates in the first two quarters of 2020, but a strong reversal of this trend in the third quarter of 2020. The increase in closures rates in the first two quarters of the pandemic was substantially larger for small businesses than large businesses, but the rebound in the third quarter was also larger. The disproportionate closing of small businesses led to a sharp concentration of market share among larger businesses as indicated by the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index with only a partial reversal after the initial increase. The findings highlight the fragility of small businesses during a large adverse shock and the consequences for the competitiveness of markets.
Short-Term Tax Cuts, Long-Term Stimulus
James Cloyne et al.
NBER Working Paper, July 2022
Abstract:
We study the persistent effects of temporary changes in U.S. federal corporate and personal income tax rates using a narrative identification approach. A corporate income tax cut leads to a sustained increase in GDP and productivity, with peak effects between five and eight years. R&D spending and capital investment display hump-shaped responses while hours worked and employment are much less affected. In contrast, personal income tax cuts trigger a short-lived boost to GDP, productivity and hours worked but have no long-term effects. We develop and estimate an endogenous growth model with variable factor utilization and show that these features generate a pro-cyclical response of productivity which is key to account for our empirical findings.
Do Credit Rating Agencies Influence Elections?
Igor Cunha, Miguel Ferreira & Rui Silva
Review of Finance, July 2022, Pages 937-969
Abstract:
We show that credit rating agencies can influence political elections. We find that incumbent political parties experience an increase in their vote shares following municipal bond upgrades. The evidence is consistent with rating agencies affecting elections indirectly by expanding local governments' debt capacity and directly through an impact on voters' perceptions of the quality of incumbent politicians. To identify these effects, we examine election outcomes within neighboring counties by exploiting exogenous variation in municipal bond ratings due to Moody's recalibration of its scale in 2010.
Tax Advantages and Imperfect Competition in Auctions for Municipal Bonds
Daniel Garrett et al
Review of Economic Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study the interaction between tax advantages for municipal bonds and the market structure of auctions for these bonds. We show that this interaction can limit a bidder's ability to extract information rents and is a crucial determinant of state and local governments' borrowing costs. Reduced-form estimates show that increasing the tax advantage by 3 pp lowers mean borrowing costs by 9-10%. We estimate a structural auction model to measure markups and to illustrate and quantify how the interaction between tax policy and bidder strategic behavior determines the impact of tax advantages on municipal borrowing costs. We use the estimated model to evaluate the efficiency of Obama and Trump administration policies that limit the tax advantage for municipal bonds. Because reductions in the tax advantage inflate bidder markups and depress competition, the resulting increase in municipal borrowing costs more than offsets the tax savings to the government. Finally, we use the model to analyze a recent non-tax regulation that affects entry into municipal bond auctions.
Gas, Guns, and Governments: Financial Costs of Anti-ESG Policies
Daniel Garrett & Ivan Ivanov
Federal Reserve Working Paper, July 2022
Abstract:
We study how government regulation limiting the adoption of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies distorts financial market outcomes. The state of Texas enacted laws in 2021 that prohibit municipalities from contracting with banks that have certain ESG policies. This led to the exit of five of the largest municipal bond underwriters from the state. We find that municipal bond issuers with previous reliance on the exiting underwriters are more likely to negotiate pricing and incur higher borrowing costs after the implementation of the laws. Among remaining competitive sales, issuers face significantly fewer bidding underwriters and higher bid variance, consistent with a decline in underwriter competition. Additionally, underpricing increases among issuers most reliant on the targeted banks and bonds are placed through a larger number of smaller trades. Overall, our estimates imply Texas entities will pay an additional $303-$532 million in interest on the $32 billion in borrowing during the first eight months following the Texas laws.
Real estate investors and the U.S. housing recovery
Lauren Lambie-Hanson, Wenli Li & Michael Slonkosky
Real Estate Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
U.S. house prices fell nearly 30% between 2006 and 2012. Meanwhile, homeownership rates declined as mortgage credit supply tightened and investors bought up properties. Although nationally house prices recovered to prebust levels by 2016, homeownership rates declined through mid-2016, as investors, particularly those purchasing through corporations, gained market share. By exploiting heterogeneity in zip codes' exposure to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac programs that affected investors' access to foreclosed properties, we find that increased presence of investors explains a significant fraction of the house price recovery. Investors reduced vacancies and shortened the time foreclosed properties spent in bank ownership.
Tracing the source of liquidity for distressed housing markets
Rohan Ganduri, Steven Chong Xiao & Serena Wenjing Xiao
Real Estate Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We show that profit-seeking institutional investors provide valuable liquidity and spur the recovery of distressed housing markets. Using a quasi-natural experiment wherein investors purchased prepackaged distressed home portfolios from government-sponsored enterprises, we find that transaction prices of properties located within 0.25 miles of bulk-sale properties increased by 1.4% more than homes located farther away. This positive price spillover effect helped reverse the discounts at which such properties were being sold prior to the bulk-sale event. The price spillover effect due to the bulk-sale event is greater for foreclosed homes (4.1%), homes similar to the bulk-sale homes (2.5%), and homes in highly distressed neighborhoods (7.0%). Our results highlight asset disposition through pooling and institutional participation as a potential market-driven channel for the recovery of distressed housing markets.
The social transmission of economic sentiment on consumption
Christos Makridis
European Economic Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper investigates the causal effect of economic sentiment on consumption using micro-data between 2008 and 2017. After showing that individuals update their beliefs about the national state of the economy in response to local housing and labor market fluctuations, I use the Social Connectedness Index (SCI) to construct an SCI-weighted index of housing price growth that captures individuals' exposure to housing market shocks in friends' zip codes. Using plausibly exogenous variation in individuals' exposure to friends who experience heterogeneous housing price growth, I find that a standard deviation rise in economic sentiment is associated with a 17.3-24.6% rise in consumption of non-durables.