Excess death rates for Republicans and Democrats during the COVID-19 pandemic

Political affiliation has emerged as a potential risk factor for COVID-19, amid evidence that Republican-leaning counties have had higher COVID-19 death rates than Democrat-leaning counties and evidence of a link between political party affiliation and vaccination views. This study constructs an individual-level dataset with political affiliation and excess death rates during the COVID-19 pandemic via a linkage of 2017 voter registration in Ohio and Florida to mortality data from 2018 to 2021. We estimate substantially higher excess death rates for registered Republicans when compared to registered Democrats, with almost all of the difference concentrated in the period after vaccines were widely available in our study states. Overall, the excess death rate for Republicans was 5.4 percentage points (pp), or 76%, higher than the excess death rate for Democrats. Post-vaccines, the excess death rate gap between Republicans and Democrats widened from 1.6 pp (22% of the Democrat excess death rate) to 10.4 pp (153% of the Democrat excess death rate). The gap in excess death rates between Republicans and Democrats is concentrated in counties with low vaccination rates and only materializes after vaccines became widely available

Contagion Effects of the Silicon Valley Bank Run

This paper analyzes the contagion effects associated with the failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and identifies bank-specific vulnerabilities contributing to the subsequent declines in banks' stock returns. We find that uninsured deposits, unrealized losses in held-to-maturity securities, bank size, and cash holdings had a significant impact, while better-quality assets or holdings of liquid securities did not help mitigate the negative spillovers. Interestingly, banks whose stocks performed worse post SVB also had lower returns in the previous year following Federal Reserve interest rate hikes. The stock market partially anticipated risks associated with uninsured deposit reliance, but did not price in unrealized losses due to interest rate hikes nor risks linked to bank size. While mid-sized banks experienced particular stress immediately after the SVB failure, over time negative spillovers became widespread except for the largest banks

Parsing the content of bank supervision

We measure bank supervision using the database of supervisory issues, known as matters requiring attention or immediate attention, raised by Federal Reserve examiners to banking organizations. The volume of supervisory issues increases with banks' asset size, especially for the largest and most complex banks, and decreases with profitability and the quality of the loan portfolio. Stressed banks are faster at resolving issues, but all else equal, resolving new issues takes longer the more issues a bank faces, which may suggest capacity constraints in addressing multiple supervisory issues. Using computational linguistic methods on the text of the issue description, we define five categorical issue topics. The subset of issues related to capital levels and loan portfolio are the most consequential in terms of supervisory rating downgrades and are directly related to changes in banks' balance sheet characteristics and profitability. Other issues appear to reflect soft information and are less correlated with bank observables. By categorizing questions asked by analysts at banks' quarterly earnings calls using the same linguistic approach, we find that market monitors raise issues similar to those of supervisors when the issues are related to hard information (such as loan quality or capital) and public supervisory assessment programs

MBS Ratings and the Mortgage Credit Boom

We study credit ratings on subprime and Alt-A mortgage-backed securities (MBS) deals issued between 2001 and 2007, the period leading up to the subprime crisis. The fraction of highly-rated securities in each deal is decreasing in mortgage credit risk (measured either ex-ante or ex-post), suggesting ratings contain useful information for investors. However, we also find evidence of significant time-variation in risk-adjusted credit ratings, including a progressive decline in standards around the MBS market peak between the start of 2005 and mid-2007. Conditional on initial ratings, we observe underperformance (high mortgage defaults and losses, and large rating downgrades) amongst deals with observably higher-risk mortgages based on a simple ex-ante model, and deals with a high fraction of opaque low-documentation loans. These findings hold over the entire sample period, not just for deal cohorts most affected by the crisis.

Essays in Consumer and Corporate Finance

The tension between creditors and debtors is an integral component in finance. My dissertation focuses on two important cases where this tension has important economic implications. In my first two chapters, I focus on debtor protections in consumer finance. In chapter one, I examine the institution of consumer bankruptcy and the effect it has on consumers' access to credit and subsequent financial health. In chapter two, I study the effect of debtor protections during the recent recession, and quantify the extent to which these policies can alleviate the decline associated with debt-driven recessions. Finally, in the third chapter, I focus on the governance of firms, specifically examining a new measure capturing the extent to which foreign firms cross-listing in the United States bind to domestic governance rules. In sum, my dissertation chapters provide new perspectives on the interaction between creditors and debtors, and the extent to which policy environments can influence this interaction.Economic