Working Papers
Nonpayment and Eviction in the Rental Housing Market (with John Eric Humphries, Scott Nelson, Winnie van Dijk, and Daniel Waldinger). June 2025. [PDF]. Policy Briefs: [BFI] [CBR] [SIERP] [NBER]. Revision requested at Journal of Political Economy.
Abstract
Recent research has documented the prevalence and consequences of evictions, but our understanding of underlying drivers of the eviction rate and the scope for policy to affect it remains limited. In this paper, we study landlords' decisions to evict tenants and how these decisions may be influenced by policy. We combine novel lease-level ledger data from low-income rental markets with a model of the landlord's eviction decision to characterize the persistence of shocks to tenant default risk, landlords' information about these shocks, and landlords' cost of eviction. Our data show that nonpayment is common, is frequently tolerated by landlords, and is often followed by recovery, suggesting that landlords face a trade-off between initiating a costly eviction or waiting to learn whether a tenant can continue paying. Our dynamic discrete choice model of the eviction decision captures this tradeoff. Estimates indicate that filing an eviction costs landlords the equivalent of 2-3 months of rent, and that the majority of evictions involve tenants who are unlikely to pay going forward. This implies that uniformly applied policies can generate additional forbearance for tenants, but they do not prevent most evictions. We find that 15% of those evicted would have resumed paying rent, suggesting a role for more targeted interventions. Among the policy instruments we consider, direct financial incentives for landlords—such as taxes and subsidies—are more likely to durably prevent evictions than procedural delays.
The Econometrics of Matching with Transferable Utility: A Progress Report (with Pierre-André Chiappori and Bernard Salanié). October 2025. [PDF]. Submitted.
Abstract
Since Choo and Siow (2006), a burgeoning literature has analyzed matching markets when utility is perfectly transferable and the joint surplus is separable. We take stock of recent methodogical developments in this area. Combining theoretical arguments and simulations, we show that the separable approach is reasonably robust to omitted variables and/or non-separabilities. We conclude with a caveat on data requirements and imbalanced datasets.
Out with the Old, In with the New: Equity and Efficiency of Secondary-Market Subsidies for Electric Vehicles (with Aaron Berman and Nathaniel Hickok). November 2025. [PDF].
Abstract
We study the cost-effectiveness and distributional impacts of consumer subsidies for electric vehicles in both the primary and secondary markets. In a stylized theoretical framework, we show that their relative cost-effectiveness is ambiguous: while new-vehicle subsidies always generate more overall adoption than used vehicle subsidies, they can also entail greater inframarginal government spending due to consumer selection into resale. To analyze the equilibrium consequences of the two subsidy designs, we develop and estimate a dynamic empirical model of the vehicle market using granular data on vehicle registrations and transactions in Texas from 2015 to 2022. The model captures consumer sorting into resale through the endogenous scrappage and replacement decisions of forward looking consumers. Counterfactual results show that secondary-market subsidies (i) are more cost-effective than primary-market subsidies due to large reductions in inframarginal spending, and (ii) deliver more progressive distributional impacts. Overall, our results highlight the role of secondary markets in shaping the equity and efficiency of subsidies for technology adoption.
The Distributional Effects of Data Interoperability: Evidence from the U.S. Residential Mortgage Market (Job Market Paper). November 2025. [PDF].
Abstract
We explore the equilibrium consequences of consumer information-sharing between firms in credit markets. Exploiting a novel borrower-lender search dataset and the entry of an industry-led interoperable data network, we report that in-network firms enjoy a relative (1) increase in applications and (2) decrease in ex-post default among originated mortgages. These patterns suggest two potential mechanisms at play: reduced frictions for borrowers and screening efficiency gains for in-network lenders due to improved information access. We propose and estimate a model of consumer search and firm pricing, which internalizes these economic forces. Estimated extra costs of applying to out-of-network lenders are 35% of search costs. Interoperability enhances screening accuracy by 58% and 70% for borrowers with high- and low-repayment prospects, respectively. Counterfactuals reveal that, while overall surplus rises with an industry-wide data-sharing mandate, the division of welfare benefits may be uneven. In our setting, surplus increases by 8% for less risky borrowers, who account for the majority of the consumer pool, but decreases by 30% for risky types: a result driven by strategic selection into application and uniform screening boost. When lenders differ in their ability to improve screening (e.g., due to technological constraints), data interoperability can reduce profits for less technologically advanced firms.
Work in Progress
Copyrights and Product Variety: Evidence from the Golden Age of Hip Hop