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Working Paper
The Local Fiscal Multiplier of Intergovernmental Grants: Evidence from Federal Medicaid Assistance to States
Advocates of Medicaid expansion argue that federal Medicaid assistance to states fosters economic activity, generating positive local multiplier effects. Furthermore, during economic downturns, Congress regularly tweaks federal match rates for state Medicaid spending – including during the COVID-19 public health emergency – in order to assist states. Despite heavy reliance on Medicaid funding formulas, identifying the economic effect of these federal transfers has proved challenging. This is because federal Medicaid assistance (to states) is endogenous, since funding levels are correlated ...
Working Paper
Local Projections Bootstrap Inference
Bootstrap procedures for local projections typically rely on assuming that the data generating process (DGP) is a finite order vector autoregression (VAR), often taken to be that implied by the local projection at horizon 1. Although convenient, it is well documented that a VAR can be a poor approximation to impulse dynamics at horizons beyond its lag length. In this paper we assume instead that the precise form of the parametric model generating the data is not known. If one is willing to assume that the DGP is perhaps an infinite order process, a larger class of models can be accommodated ...
Working Paper
Simultaneous Spatial Panel Data Models with Common Shocks
I consider a simultaneous spatial panel data model, jointly modeling three effects: simultaneous effects, spatial effects and common shock effects. This joint modeling and consideration of cross-sectional heteroskedasticity result in a large number of incidental parameters. I propose two estimation approaches, a quasi-maximum likelihood (QML) method and an iterative generalized principal components (IGPC) method. I develop full inferential theories for the estimation approaches and study the trade-off between the model specifications and their respective asymptotic properties. I further ...
Working Paper
Collaboration in Bipartite Networks, with an Application to Coauthorship Networks
This paper studies the impact of collaboration on research output. First, we build a micro founded model for scientific knowledge production, where collaboration between researchers is represented by a bipartite network. The equilibrium of the game incorporates both the complementarity effect between collaborating researchers and the substitutability effect between concurrent projects of the same researcher. Next, we develop a Bayesian MCMC procedure to estimate the structural parameters, taking into account the endogenous matching of researchers and projects. Finally, we illustrate the ...
Working Paper
A Local Projections Approach to Difference-in-Differences Event Studies
Many of the challenges in the estimation of dynamic heterogeneous treatment effects can be resolved with local projection (LP) estimators of the sort used in applied macroeconometrics. This approach provides a convenient alternative to the more complicated solutions proposed in the recent literature on Difference in-Differences (DiD). The key is to combine LPs with a flexible ‘clean control’ condition to define appropriate sets of treated and control units. Our proposed LP-DiD estimator is clear, simple, easy and fast to compute, and it is transparent and flexible in its handling of ...
Working Paper
Risk-Shifting, Regulation, and Government Assistance
This paper examines an episode when policy response to a financial crisis effectively incentivized financial institutions to reallocate their portfolios toward safe assets. Following a shift to a regime of enhanced regulation and scaled-down public assistance during the savings and loan crisis in 1989, I find that thrifts with a high probability of failure increased their composition of safe assets relative to thrifts with a low probability of failure. The findings also show a shift to safe assets among stock thrifts relative to mutual thrifts, thereby providing evidence of risk-shifting from ...
Working Paper
House Price Growth Interdependencies and Comovement
This paper examines house price diffusion across metropolitan areas in the United States. We develop a generalization of the Hamilton and Owyang (2012) Markov-switching model, where we incorporate direct regional spillovers using a spatial weighting matrix. The Markov-switching framework allows consideration for house price movements that occur due to similar timing of downturns across MSAs. The inclusion of the spatial weighting matrix improves fit compared to a standard endogenous clustering model. We find seven clusters of MSAs that experience idiosyncratic recessions plus one distinct ...
Working Paper
Modelling Dependence in High Dimensions with Factor Copulas
his paper presents flexible new models for the dependence structure, or copula, of economic variables based on a latent factor structure. The proposed models are particularly attractive for relatively high dimensional applications, involving fifty or more variables, and can be combined with semiparametric marginal distributions to obtain flexible multivariate distributions. Factor copulas generally lack a closed-form density, but we obtain analytical results for the implied tail dependence using extreme value theory, and we verify that simulation-based estimation using rank statistics is ...
Working Paper
Large panel data models with cross-sectional dependence: a survey
This paper provides an overview of the recent literature on estimation and inference in large panel data models with cross-sectional dependence. It reviews panel data models with strictly exogenous regressors as well as dynamic models with weakly exogenous regressors. The paper begins with a review of the concepts of weak and strong cross-sectional dependence, and discusses the exponent of cross-sectional dependence that characterizes the different degrees of cross-sectional dependence. It considers a number of alternative estimators for static and dynamic panel data models, distinguishing ...
Working Paper
Is \"Fintech\" Good for Small Business Borrowers? Impacts on Firm Growth and Customer Satisfaction
?Fintech? is a rapidly expanding segment of the financial market that is receiving much attention from investors and increasing regulatory scrutiny. While the attention is rising, very little is known about the performance of these lending sources on the outcomes of small businesses that make use of them. The Federal Reserve?s 2015 Small Business Credit Survey has data on the experiences of business owners with this new funding source and can provide some useful insights into this expanding sector, if compositional differences among the businesses that get bank loans, those that get fintech ...