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When The Great Equalizer Shuts Down: Schools, Peers, And Parents In Pandemic Time, Francesco Agostinelli, Matthias Doepke, Giuseppe Sorrenti, Fabrizio Zilibotti Dec 2020

When The Great Equalizer Shuts Down: Schools, Peers, And Parents In Pandemic Time, Francesco Agostinelli, Matthias Doepke, Giuseppe Sorrenti, Fabrizio Zilibotti

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

What are the effects of school closures during the Covid-19 pandemic on children’s education? Online education is an imperfect substitute for in-person learning, particularly for children from low-income families. Peer effects also change: schools allow children from different socio-economic backgrounds to mix together, and this effect is lost when schools are closed. Another factor is the response of parents, some of whom compensate for the changed environment through their own efforts, while others are unable to do so. We examine the interaction of these factors with the aid of a structural model of skill formation. We find that school closures …


A Model Of Crisis Management, Fei Li, Jidong Zhou Dec 2020

A Model Of Crisis Management, Fei Li, Jidong Zhou

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We propose a model of how multiple societies respond to a common crisis. A government faces a “damned-either-way” policy-making dilemma: aggressive intervention contains the crisis, but the resulting good outcome makes people skeptical of the costly response; light intervention worsens the crisis and causes the government to be faulted for not doing enough. This dilemma can be mitigated for the society that encounters the crisis first if another society faces the same crisis afterward. Our model predicts that the later society does not necessarily perform better despite having more information, while the earlier society might benefit from a dynamic counterfactual …


Cash Transfers As A Response To Covid-19: A Randomized Experiment In Kenya, Wyatt Brooks, Kevin Donovan, Terence Johnson, Jackline Oluoch-Aridi Dec 2020

Cash Transfers As A Response To Covid-19: A Randomized Experiment In Kenya, Wyatt Brooks, Kevin Donovan, Terence Johnson, Jackline Oluoch-Aridi

Discussion Papers

We deliver an unconditional cash transfer equal to one month’s average profit to a randomly selected group of Kenyan female microenterprise owners in May 2020 at the outset of exponential growth in COVID-19 cases. Firm profit, inventory spending, and food expenditures increased relative to a control group. Entrepreneurs recovered about one third of the profit lost during the crisis. The transfers caused greater business activity by inducing previously closed businesses to re-open. PPE spending and precautionary management practices increase to mitigate this effect, but only among those who perceive major health risk from COVID-19. The results suggest cash transfers promoted …


A Model Of Sequential Crisis Management, Fei Li, Jidong Zhou Dec 2020

A Model Of Sequential Crisis Management, Fei Li, Jidong Zhou

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We propose a model of how multiple societies respond to a common crisis. A government faces a "damned-either-way" policymaking dilemma: aggressive intervention contains the crisis, but the resulting good outcome makes people skeptical about the costly response; light intervention worsens the crisis and causes the government to be faulted for not doing enough. When multiple societies encounter the crisis sequentially, due to this policymaking dilemma, late societies may underperform despite having more information, while early societies can benefit from a dynamic counterfactual effect.


Labor Gone Digital (Digifacket)! Experiences From Creating A Web Archive For Swedish Trade Unions, Jenny Jansson, Katrin Uba, Jaanus Karo Nov 2020

Labor Gone Digital (Digifacket)! Experiences From Creating A Web Archive For Swedish Trade Unions, Jenny Jansson, Katrin Uba, Jaanus Karo

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

The Internet has become an increasingly important forum for societal activism, as event mobilization, member organization, and some actions have moved online. These new types of activities, often facilitated by diverse social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, form an increasingly important part of contemporary social movements’ and organizations’ communication, work, and expression. This rapid digitalization and the increase of online activities have created a dilemma for social movement archives and researchers: Born-digital material is necessary to understand our contemporary movements, yet the materials generated and available on the Internet are rarely systematically archived. To help find solutions …


Open Banking: Credit Market Competition When Borrowers Own The Data, Zhiguo He, Jing Huang, Jidong Zhou Nov 2020

Open Banking: Credit Market Competition When Borrowers Own The Data, Zhiguo He, Jing Huang, Jidong Zhou

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Open banking facilitates data sharing consented by customers who generate the data, with a regulatory goal of promoting competition between traditional banks and challenger fintech entrants. We study lending market competition when sharing banks’ customer data enables better borrower screening or targeting by fintech lenders. Open banking could make the entire financial industry better off yet leave all borrowers worse off, even if borrowers could choose whether to share their data. We highlight the importance of equilibrium credit quality inference from borrowers’ endogenous sign-up decisions. When data sharing triggers privacy concerns by facilitating exploitative targeted loans, the equilibrium sign-up population …


Mothers’ Social Networks And Socioeconomic Gradients Of Isolation, Alison Andrew, Orazio P. Attanasio, Britta Augsburg, Jere Behrman, Monimalika Day, Pamela Jervis, Costas Meghir, Angus Phimister Nov 2020

Mothers’ Social Networks And Socioeconomic Gradients Of Isolation, Alison Andrew, Orazio P. Attanasio, Britta Augsburg, Jere Behrman, Monimalika Day, Pamela Jervis, Costas Meghir, Angus Phimister

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Social connections are fundamental to human wellbeing. This paper examines the social networks of young married women in rural Odisha, India.. This is a group, for whom highly-gendered norms around marriage, mobility, and work are likely to shape opportunities to form and maintain meaningful ties with other women. We track the social networks of 2,170 mothers over four years, and find a high degree of isolation. Wealthier women and women more-advantaged castes have smaller social networks than their less-advantaged peers. These gradients are primarily driven by the fact that more-advantaged women are less likely to know other women within their …


Aggregate Implications Of Firm Heterogeneity: A Nonparametric Analysis Of Monopolistic Competition Trade Models, Rodrigo Adão, Costas Arkolakis, Sharat Ganapati Nov 2020

Aggregate Implications Of Firm Heterogeneity: A Nonparametric Analysis Of Monopolistic Competition Trade Models, Rodrigo Adão, Costas Arkolakis, Sharat Ganapati

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We measure the role of firm heterogeneity in counterfactual predictions of monopolistic competition trade models without parametric restrictions on the distribution of firm fundamentals. We show that two bilateral elasticity functions are sufficient to nonparametrically compute the counterfactual aggregate impact of trade shocks, and recover changes in economic fundamentals from observed data. These functions are identified from two semiparametric gravity equations governing the impact of bilateral trade costs on the extensive and intensive margins of firm-level exports. Applying our methodology, we estimate elasticity functions that imply an impact of trade costs on trade flows that falls when more firms serve …


Open Banking: Credit Market Competition When Borrowers Own The Data, Zhiguo He, Jing Huang, Jidong Zhou Nov 2020

Open Banking: Credit Market Competition When Borrowers Own The Data, Zhiguo He, Jing Huang, Jidong Zhou

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Open banking facilitates data sharing consented to by customers who generate the data, with the regulatory goal of promoting competition between traditional banks and challenger fintech entrants. We study lending market competition when sharing banks’ customer transaction data enables better borrower screening. Open banking can make the entire financial industry better off yet leave all borrowers worse off, even if borrowers have the control of whether to share their banking data. We highlight the importance of the equilibrium credit quality inference from borrowers’ endogenous sign-up decisions. We also study extensions with fintech affinities and data sharing on borrower preferences.


Improved Information In Search Markets, Jidong Zhou Nov 2020

Improved Information In Search Markets, Jidong Zhou

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

How will an improved information environment affects competition and market performance when consumers face search frictions? This paper provides a unified way to model information improvement that makes the search pool more ``selective" (e.g., due to personalized recommendations), or more ``informative" (e.g., due to the availability of more detailed product information). Information improvement tends to induce consumers to search less, intensify price competition and benefit consumers, if the search friction is small, or if information improvement truncates the match utility distribution from below. More generally, however, it is also possible for information improvement to raise the market price and harm …


Analysis Of Nine U.S. Recessions And Three Expansions, Ray C. Fair Oct 2020

Analysis Of Nine U.S. Recessions And Three Expansions, Ray C. Fair

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Nine U.S. recessions and three expansions are analyzed in this paper using a structural macroeconometric model. With two exceptions and one partial exception, the episodes are predicted well by the model, including the 2008-2009 recession, conditional on the actual values of the exogenous variables. The main exogenous variables are stock prices, housing prices, import prices, exports, and exogenous government policy variables. Monetary policy is endogenous. Fluctuations in stock and housing prices (housing prices after 1995) are important drivers of output fluctuations—large wealth effects on household expenditures.


Analysis Of Nine U.S. Recessions And Three Expansions, Ray C. Fair Oct 2020

Analysis Of Nine U.S. Recessions And Three Expansions, Ray C. Fair

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Nine U.S. recessions and three expansions are analyzed in this paper using a structural macroeconometric model. With two exceptions and one partial exception, the episodes are predicted well by the model, including the 2008-2009 recession, conditional on the actual values of the exogenous variables. The main exogenous variables are stock prices, housing prices, import prices, exports, and exogenous government policy variables. Monetary policy is endogenous. Fluctuations in stock and housing prices (housing prices after 1995) are important drivers of output fluctuations—large wealth effects on household expenditures. In explaining the 2008-2009 recession detailed financial variables such as credit-constraint variables are not …


Improved Information In Search Markets, Jidong Zhou Oct 2020

Improved Information In Search Markets, Jidong Zhou

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

This paper studies how an improved information environment affects consumer search and firm competition. We find conditions for information improvement to have unambiguous impacts on search duration, price and consumer welfare. In many cases consumers benefit from information improvement regardless of how it affects the market price, but there are also cases where information improvement raises price significantly so that consumers suffer from it. Our model provides a unified way to consider the market implications of various types of information improvement such as search advertising, personalized recommendations, filtering, and VR shopping technology.


Forecasting Economic Activity Using The Yield Curve: Quasi-Real-Time Applications For New Zealand, Australia And The Us, Todd Henry, Peter C.B. Phillips Oct 2020

Forecasting Economic Activity Using The Yield Curve: Quasi-Real-Time Applications For New Zealand, Australia And The Us, Todd Henry, Peter C.B. Phillips

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Inversion of the yield curve has come to be viewed as a leading recession indicator. Unsurprisingly, some recent instances of inversion have attracted attention from economic commentators and policymakers about possible impending recessions. Using a variety of time series models and recent innovations in econometric method, this paper conducts quasi-real-time forecasting exercises to investigate whether the predictive capability of the yield curve extends to forecasting economic activity in general and whether removing the term premium component from yields affects forecast accuracy. The empirical findings for the US, Australia, and New Zealand show that forecast performance is not improved either by …


Selling Consumer Data For Profit: Optimal Market-Segmentation Design And Its Consequences, Kai Hao Yang Oct 2020

Selling Consumer Data For Profit: Optimal Market-Segmentation Design And Its Consequences, Kai Hao Yang

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

A data broker sells market segmentations created by consumer data to a producer with private production cost who sells a product to a unit mass of consumers with heterogeneous values. In this setting, I completely characterize the revenue-maximizing mechanisms for the data broker. In particular, every optimal mechanism induces quasi-perfect price discrimination. That is, the data broker sells the producer a market segmentation described by a cost-dependent cutoff, such that all the consumers with values above the cutoff end up buying and paying their values while the rest of consumers do not buy. The characterization of optimal mechanisms leads to …


Lessons Learned: Lorie Logan, Mercedes Cardona Oct 2020

Lessons Learned: Lorie Logan, Mercedes Cardona

Journal of Financial Crises

Lorie Logan is executive vice president in the Markets Group of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the System Open Market Account (SOMA) manager pro tem for the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), and head of Market Operations, Monitoring, and Analysis (MOMA).


Lessons Learned: Donald Kohn, Maryann Haggerty Oct 2020

Lessons Learned: Donald Kohn, Maryann Haggerty

Journal of Financial Crises

Kohn, an economist, is a 40-year veteran of the Federal Reserve System. He served as a member of the Board of Governors, and was vice chair, from 2002-2010, which included the years of the global financial crisis (GFC).


The United Kingdom's Asset-Backed Securities Guarantee Scheme (U.K. Gfc), June Rhee Oct 2020

The United Kingdom's Asset-Backed Securities Guarantee Scheme (U.K. Gfc), June Rhee

Journal of Financial Crises

The key structures of housing finance in the UK in the years leading up to the global financial crisis of 2007-09 consisted of retail deposits, secondary market funding and wholesale interbank lending. Although retail deposits were the major funder of UK mortgages, secondary market funding, which included covered bonds and residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS), accounted for 31% of UK mortgage lending in 2006. In 2007, the collapse of the U.S. subprime mortgage market triggered a financial shock, and the shock quickly traveled beyond national borders. Regardless of differences in the UK mortgage market, investors’ concern over the prospects of the …


The United Kingdom's Credit Guarantee Scheme (U.K. Gfc), Christian M. Mcnamara Oct 2020

The United Kingdom's Credit Guarantee Scheme (U.K. Gfc), Christian M. Mcnamara

Journal of Financial Crises

The September 15, 2008, bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers resulted in a collapse of wholesale funding markets that threatened the ability of UK financial institutions to continue funding themselves. By the end of the month, two leading UK banks—HBOS and Bradford & Bingley—had to be rescued, and there was a real risk that the entire financial system could collapse. Faced with the need to stabilize the system, UK regulators on October 8 introduced a package of measures that included a £250 billion Credit Guarantee Scheme (the Guarantee Scheme) aimed at providing banks with access to needed funding. Under the Guarantee Scheme, …


Sweden's Guarantee Scheme (Sweden Gfc), Lily S. Engbith, Kevin Kiernan Oct 2020

Sweden's Guarantee Scheme (Sweden Gfc), Lily S. Engbith, Kevin Kiernan

Journal of Financial Crises

Although Sweden was not as directly impacted by the Global Financial Crisis as some other economies, Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy on September 15, 2008, prompted Swedish authorities to take preemptive measures to protect domestic banks and financial institutions. One such program, announced on October 20, 2008, and implemented on October 29, 2008, was designed to preserve credit extension to businesses and households through what became known as the Swedish Guarantee Scheme. Per the terms of the Scheme, new short- and medium-term debt of maturities ranging from 90 days to five years issued by eligible banks would be guaranteed by the Swedish …


The Spanish Guarantee Scheme For Credit Institutions (Spain Gfc), Lily Engbith Oct 2020

The Spanish Guarantee Scheme For Credit Institutions (Spain Gfc), Lily Engbith

Journal of Financial Crises

Given Spanish banks’ heavy investment in the housing and construction markets in the lead-up to the global financial crisis (GFC), the collapse of the subprime mortgage market and Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy on September 15, 2008, impelled the government to implement stabilization measures to calm, recapitalize, and restructure its domestic banking sector. The Spanish Guarantee Scheme for Credit Institutions (the Guarantee Scheme) was one of the first interventions to be enacted, announced by Spain’s Ministry of Economy and Finance on October 13, 2008, by Royal Decree-Law 7/2008 on “Urgent Economic and Financial Measures in relation to the Concerted Action Plan of …


The Portuguese Guarantee Scheme (Portugal Gfc), Julia A. Arnous Oct 2020

The Portuguese Guarantee Scheme (Portugal Gfc), Julia A. Arnous

Journal of Financial Crises

By October 2008, Portuguese banks’ access to liquidity was severely restricted due to strains in international wholesale markets. On October 12-13, 2008, the Portuguese government notified the European Commission of a guarantee scheme intended to promote solvent credit institutions’ access to liquidity as part of the European policy response to the acute financial crisis aiming to achieve and maintain financial stability. Under the scheme, the Portuguese government guaranteed financing agreements and banks’ issuance of non-subordinated short- and medium-term debt. To obtain a guarantee under the Scheme, banks paid a fee based on the maturity of the debt and a risk …


The Polish Guarantee Scheme (Poland Gfc), Manuel Leon Hoyos Oct 2020

The Polish Guarantee Scheme (Poland Gfc), Manuel Leon Hoyos

Journal of Financial Crises

Faced with the global financial crisis of 2007–2009, Poland implemented a scheme of State support for financial institutions. In view of a potential global credit crunch, it aimed at improving short- and medium-term liquidity of domestic financial institutions. The scheme came into force on March 13, 2009, and was approved by the European Commission under European Union State Aid rules on September 25, 2009. The scheme enabled the Ministry of Finance, on behalf of the State Treasury, to provide support in the form of Treasury guarantees on newly issued bank debt and the exchange of Treasury bonds for less liquid …


The Dutch Credit Guarantee Scheme (Netherlands Gfc), Lily Engbith Oct 2020

The Dutch Credit Guarantee Scheme (Netherlands Gfc), Lily Engbith

Journal of Financial Crises

As fallout from the global financial crisis intensified in October 2008, governments around the world sought to implement stabilization measures in order to calm and protect their domestic markets. While not directly exposed to the subprime mortgage crisis, the Kingdom of the Netherlands announced the creation of the Dutch Credit Guarantee Scheme (the Guarantee Scheme) on October 13, 2008, to boost confidence in interbank lending markets and to ensure the flow of credit to Dutch households and companies. In establishing this program, the Dutch State Treasury Agency of the Ministry of Finance (DSTA) committed €200 billion to support the issuance …


The State Guarantee Of External Debt Of Korean Banks (South Korea Gfc), Lily S. Engbith Oct 2020

The State Guarantee Of External Debt Of Korean Banks (South Korea Gfc), Lily S. Engbith

Journal of Financial Crises

Following the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy of September 15, 2008, a number of foreign governments enacted stabilization measures in order to bolster their currencies and inject much-needed liquidity into domestic markets. As part of its effort, the Korean Ministry of Strategy and Finance announced a series of government interventions that included a three-year guarantee of foreign debt issued (including extensions of maturity) by domestic banks between October 20, 2008, and June 30, 2009. This opt-in program was introduced as a preemptive step in ensuring that Korean financial institutions would retain competitive access to external funding in the wake of the global …


Ireland's Credit Institutions (Eligible Liabilities Guarantee) Scheme (Ireland Gfc), Claire Simon Oct 2020

Ireland's Credit Institutions (Eligible Liabilities Guarantee) Scheme (Ireland Gfc), Claire Simon

Journal of Financial Crises

Following the failure of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, Irish banks found themselves unable to roll over their significant foreign borrowings on the interbank lending market. With the banks facing a liquidity crisis, the Irish government decided to issue a blanket guarantee of all liabilities of six banks through the Credit Institutions Financial Support Scheme (CIFS). As the crisis worsened, and it became clear that Irish banks were facing a solvency—not just liquidity—crisis, the Irish government was forced to provide additional support to the financial system, which took the form of capital injections and a national asset management company for …


The Italian Guarantee Scheme (Italy Gfc), Lily Engbith Oct 2020

The Italian Guarantee Scheme (Italy Gfc), Lily Engbith

Journal of Financial Crises

The collapse of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, and its severe impact on global credit markets impelled governments around the world to enact stabilization measures to calm and protect their domestic economies. The Italian Republic, while not directly affected by the US subprime mortgage crisis, preemptively implemented emergency procedures and programs to ensure the stability of their banking system. Announced with the passage of Decree-Law No. 157 on October 13, 2008, and legally enforced under Law 190/2008 of December 4, 2008, the Italian Guarantee Scheme (the Guarantee Scheme) was aimed at protecting institutions whose interbank lending abilities had the …


The Hungarian Guarantee Scheme (Hungary Gfc), Alec Buchholtz Oct 2020

The Hungarian Guarantee Scheme (Hungary Gfc), Alec Buchholtz

Journal of Financial Crises

In the midst of the global financial crisis, in October 2008, the Magyar Nemzeti Bank (MNB), the Hungarian national bank, noticed a selloff of government securities by foreign banks and a large depreciation in the exchange rate of the Hungarian forint (HUF) in foreign exchange (FX) markets. Hungarian banks experienced liquidity pressures due to margin calls on FX swap contracts, prompting the MNB and Minister of Finance to seek assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the World Bank. The IMF and ECB approved Hungary’s requests in late 2008 to create a €20 billion …


French Liquidity Support Through The Société De Financement De L’Economie (Sfef) (France Gfc), Everest Fang Oct 2020

French Liquidity Support Through The Société De Financement De L’Economie (Sfef) (France Gfc), Everest Fang

Journal of Financial Crises

After the collapse of the Lehman Brothers in September 2008, financial panic and uncertainty intensified in Europe. In France, banks faced a widespread confidence crisis driven by fear that they were exposed to the US subprime market. In response, on October 13, 2008, the French government passed the “loi de finances rectificative pour le financement de I'économie.” This provided for the establishment of the Société de Financement de l’Economie Française (SFEF), a special purpose vehicle (SPV) jointly owned by the State and a group of banks and responsible for refinancing major French credit institutions. The SFEF raised funds on the …


The Guarantee Scheme For Bank Funding In Finland (Finland Gfc), Lily Engbith Oct 2020

The Guarantee Scheme For Bank Funding In Finland (Finland Gfc), Lily Engbith

Journal of Financial Crises

As the global financial crisis raged in October 2008, its severe impact on global credit markets impelled governments to enact stabilization measures to calm and protect their domestic economies. The Republic of Finland, though not directly affected, designed preemptive interventions to mitigate disruption to its financial system. Among them was the Guarantee Scheme for Bank Funding in Finland (the Guarantee Scheme), announced on October 22, 2008, and implemented on February 12, 2009, which aimed to support banks and mortgage institutions with their short- and medium-term financing needs. Under the program, the Finnish State Treasury made up to €50 billion available …