Research

Selected Working Papers

• Federal Lawsuits, Bank Lending, and Shadow Bank Growth.   With Yangfan Sun
  Under review

  
  Beyond Hot Money: Brokered Deposits and Bank Funding Stability.   With Andreas Fuster
  Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper No. 26-22
  Abstract:
  Postcrisis work on bank funding emphasizes stability risks from wholesale (uninsured) liabilities, contrasting them with stable core deposits. Many U.S. banks also rely on non-core insured funding—especially brokered deposits (BD)—which supervisors and analysts often associate with risk-taking and run-proneness. We test the latter. In sharp contrast to the "hot-money" view, BD funding remains available and scales in systemwide stress episodes, including the 2008–09 crisis and the 2023 banking turmoil, and serves as a source of liquidity for vulnerable banks facing uninsured outflows. Yet banks with higher BD shares appear more fragile on outcomes—sharper wholesale outflows and weaker equity performance in shocks. We reconcile these facts by showing that the adverse outcomes are concentrated among institutions that increased BD reliance on the eve of the turmoil. The evidence is consistent with self-selection and signaling effects. While our findings alleviate run-fragility concerns, the non-selective access to BD during stress (weak market discipline) reinforces concerns about risk-taking incentives and potential "gambling for resurrection."

  
  Beliefs, Disagreement, and Financial Narratives: Evidence from One Million Q&As.
  In Progress

  
  Banks, Shadow Banks, and the Transmission of Shocks in the Housing Sector.   With Andreas Fuster and Javad Kashizadeh
  In Progress

  

  Selected Publications

  (See CV for a full list)

  • Financial Regulatory Cycles: A Political Economy Model with P. Almasi and C. Prato.
    Journal of Financial Intermediation, 2025.

    
    Optimal Lockdowns Under Constraints with C. Parkinson (University of Arizona).
    Economic Inquiry, 2024.

    
    Bank Capital: A Seawall Approach with Dell'Ariccia, G., L. Laeven, L. Ratnovski, H. Tong.
    International Journal of Central Banking, 2020.

    
    Housing finance and real-estate booms: a cross-country perspective with Cerutti, E. and Dell'Ariccia, G.
    Journal of Housing Economics, 2017.

    
    Regulation and the Mortgage Crisis. with Ning Fu.
    Economic Journal 2017.

    
    Borrower Protection and the Supply of Credit: Evidence from Foreclosure Laws. with Yangfan Sun.
    Journal of Financial Economics 2016.

    
    Bank Liability Structure and Mortgage Lending. with Kazim Kazimov.
    Journal of Financial Economics 2015.

    
    Growth opportunities, Strategic Savings, and the Dot Com Bubble. with N. Arnold.
    Economic Inquiry 2015.

    
    Sudden Stops, Output Drops and Credit Collapses.
    Macroeconomic Dynamics 2013.