Did securitization exacerbate the foreclosure crisis by altering mortgage servicing practices? I exploit the unanticipated freeze of private mortgage securitization in 2007 to provide new evidence that securitization increases foreclosure probability and decreases modification probability. These effects are economically large and persist over time even after implementation of the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) in 2009. Using hand-collected data on the contractual terms of servicing agreements, I show that servicers typically have broad discretion to modify loans but face significant incentives favoring foreclosure. The evidence implies that securitization significantly increased foreclosure rates during and after the crisis.

Pandemic fraud is geographically concentrated and stimulated local purchases, with effects on prices. Recipients of fraudulent Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funds significantly increased their home purchasing rate compared to recipients of non-fraudulent PPP funds, and house prices in high-fraud ZIP codes increased 5.8 percentage points more than in low-fraud ZIP codes within the same county. In a horse race, pandemic fraud is one of the largest and most robust factors explaining house price appreciation during COVID. ZIP codes with fraud also experienced heightened vehicle purchases and other consumer spending in 2020-21, with a return to normal in 2022.

Following the onset of COVID-19, research production in economics and finance (measured by the posting of working papers) increased by 29%. Production increases were widespread across geographies, job titles, departments, and ages with larger increases in top departments and for people under the age of 35. Men and women both experienced production increases with the exception of women between the age of 35 and 49, who experienced no production gains despite large increases for men in the same age group. COVID-19 increased reliance on past coauthorship networks, with larger production gains for authors that are more central to the network.

Fraud indicators within the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a major COVID relief program, are highly geographically concentrated. ZIP codes and counties with high rates of suspicious PPP loans are strongly socially connected, with evidence that fraud spreads spatially over time through social networks. Individuals in suspicious social media groups have higher rates of PPP fraud, and socially connected ZIP codes frequently use the same specific FinTech lenders, consistent with social networks influencing detailed loan decisions. Our findings suggest that more proactive data analysis is needed for fraud prevention, detection, and prosecution to prevent the social spread of fraudulent schemes.

Municipal bonds exhibit considerable retail pricing variation, even for same‐size trades of the same bond on the same day, and even from the same dealer. Markups vary widely across dealers. Trading strongly clusters on eighth price increments, and clustered trades exhibit higher markups. Yields are often lowered to just above salient numbers. Machine learning estimates exploiting the richness of the data show that dealers that use strategic pricing have systematically higher markups. Recent Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board rules have had only a limited impact on markups. While a subset of dealers focus on best execution, many dealers appear focused on opportunistic pricing.

In the $793 billion Paycheck Protection Program, we examine metrics related to potential misreporting including nonregistered businesses, multiple businesses at residential addresses, abnormally high implied compensation per employee, and large inconsistencies with jobs reported in another government program. These measures consistently concentrate in certain FinTech lenders and are cross‐verified by seven additional measures. FinTech market share increased significantly over time, and suspicious lending by FinTechs in 2021 is four times the level at the start of the program. Suspicious loans are being overwhelmingly forgiven at rates similar to other loans.

Ten years after the financial crisis, the central question of what explains the rise and fall in house prices remains unresolved. We provide a unified framework to examine four excess credit supply variables and three speculation variables that have been proposed in the literature. Credit supply variables, particularly subprime share and worse originator share, strongly relate to future zip-code-level house price changes in the boom and bust, whereas none of the speculation variables consistently relate to house prices within MSAs. Pre-trends, supply elasticity, and depressed areas suggest these relations are not driven by lenders anticipating house price growth.

This paper examines whether employees involved in residential mortgage-backed security (RMBS) securitization experienced internal and external labor market consequences relative to similar non-RMBS employees in the same banks and why. Senior RMBS bankers experienced similar levels of job retention, promotion, and external job opportunities. Even signers of RMBS deals with high loss and misreporting rates or deals implicated in lawsuits experienced no adverse internal or external labor market outcomes. These findings are likely not explained by targeted or delayed employee discipline, small legal fines, or protection due to pending litigation but are consistent with implicit upper-management approval of RMBS activities.