Local Interactions Between Firms and Consumers

This dissertation studies how the spatial distributions of firms and consumers shape their interactions in local credit markets. For firms, proximity provides information about the preferences and credit quality of local consumers. For consumers, it facilitates gathering information about product availability and the prices at local firms. I explore these dynamics by developing stylized models that illustrate the key dynamics of interest and motivate empirical estimations that I take to data. In particular, this dissertation uses many novel big data assets that provide new insights into the functioning of local credit markets. In the first chapter, I study whether online retail is a complement or substitute to local offline economies by studying how consumers reorganize their trips to grocery stores and coffee shops after they become online grocery shoppers. To do so, I use new, detailed data on the daily online and offline transactions of millions of anonymized customers. My results show that consumer behaviors can create positive complementarities between online retail and some brick-and-mortar stores, creating both winning and losing stores and consumers to online retail. In the second chapter, I study the impact of branch presence on mortgage credit outcomes in the surrounding neighborhood using the density of nearby bank branch networks to instrument for actual branch presence. I find that lenders with branches lend more mortgages to borrowers in the surrounding neighborhood and that those operated by local lenders have the most positive impact for low socioeconomic-status borrowers. However, I show that branches disadvantage competing lenders by lowering the credit-quality of the competing lenders\u27 applicant pool. This adverse selection causes an aggregate negative effect of branch presence on neighborhood mortgage outcomes. In the third chapter, co-authored with Benjamin J. Keys and Jane K. Dokko, we construct a novel county-level dataset to analyze the relationship between rising house prices and non-traditional features of mortgage contracts. We apply a break-point methodology and find that, in many markets, rising use of non-traditional mortgages predates the start of the housing boom and continues to rise thereafter

Imagine no religion : heretical disgust, anger, and the symbolic purity of mind

Immoral actions, including physical/sexual (e.g., incest) and social (e.g., unfairness) taboos, are often described as disgusting. But what about immoral thoughts, more specifically, thoughts that violate religious beliefs? Do heretical thoughts taint the purity of mind? The present research examined heretical disgust using self-report measures and facial electromyography. Religious thought violations consistently elicited both self-reported disgust and anger. Feelings of disgust also predicted harsh moral judgement, independent of anger, and were mediated by feelings of “contamination”. However, religious thought violations were not associated with a disgust facial expression (i.e., levator labii muscle activity) that was elicited by physically disgusting stimuli. We conclude that people (especially more religious people) do feel disgust in response to heretical thoughts that is meaningfully distinct from anger as a moral emotion. However, heretical disgust is not embodied in a physical disgust response. Rather, disgust has a symbolic moral value that marks heretical thoughts as harmful and aversive

Shared social identity and media transmission of trauma.

When an individual or group trauma becomes a shared public experience through widespread media coverage (e.g., mass violence, being publicly outed), sharing a social identity with a targeted individual or group of victims may amplify feelings of personal vulnerability. This heightened perceived threat may draw people to engage with trauma-related media because of increased vigilance for self-relevant threats, which can, in turn, amplify distress. We studied this possibility among two U.S. national samples following the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, FL (N = 4675) and the 2018 Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court Senate hearings (N = 4894). Participants who shared LGBT or Hispanic identities with Pulse massacre victims reported greater exposure to massacre-related media and acute stress. Participants who shared Dr. Blasey Ford's identities as a victim of interpersonal violence and a Democrat reported more hearings-related media exposure and acute stress. Indirect effects of shared single identity on acute stress through self-reported event-related media exposure emerged in both studies. Results for sharing dual identities with victims were mixed. These findings have implications for media use and public health

Politicization of a Pathogen: A Prospective Longitudinal Study of COVID‐19 Responses in a Nationally Representative U.S. Sample

Understanding population-level variability in responses to pathogens over time is important for developing effective health-based messages targeted at ideologically diverse populations. Research from psychological and political sciences suggests that party and elite cues shape how people respond to major threats like climate change. Research on responses to the COVID-19 pandemic suggests similar variability across party identities; however, prior work has methodological limitations. This prospective, longitudinal study of a large probability-based nationally representative U.S. sample assessed in March–April 2020 (N = 6,514) and then 6 months later in September–October 2020 (N = 5,661) demonstrates that COVID-19 fear, perceived COVID-19 death risk, and reported health-protective behaviors became increasingly polarized over the first 6 months of the pandemic. Initial differences between Democrats and Republicans failed to converge over time and became more pronounced. Responses among Republicans were further polarized by support for former President Donald Trump: Trump Republicans initially reported weaker responses to COVID-19 than non-Trump Republicans, and these differences became more pronounced over time. Importantly, political identity and Trump support were not linked to perceived infection risk of a nonpoliticized pathogen, the flu. Finally, political identity and Republican Trump support prospectively predicted COVID-19 vaccine intentions 6 months into the pandemic