Working Papers
Revise and Resubmit, Journal of Political Economy
MFA Best Doctoral Paper Award (2021)
WFA PhD Candidate Award For Outstanding Research (2021)
EFA Engelbert Dockner Memorial Prize for the Best Paper by Young Researchers, Runner-Up (2021)
FMA Best Paper in Investments (2021)
Bank of Canada Graduate Student Paper Award, Runner-Up (2022)
Colorado Finance Summit Best PhD Paper Award (2022)
Top Finance Graduate Award (2023)
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This paper tests the conventional view that redistribution is central to the democratization process using data from stock markets. Consistent with this view, democratizations have a large, negative impact on asset valuations driven by a rise in redistribution risk. Across 90 countries over 200 years, risk premia are substantially elevated in democratizations, similar in magnitude to financial crises. A shift in Catholic church doctrine in support of democracy provides causal evidence that democratizations increase risk premia. Successful democratizations lead to substantial redistribution: the size of the public sector grows, income inequality falls, and the labor share of income rises. An extended version of the canonical redistribution-based model of democratization that includes asset prices can quantitatively explain these effects. The model also explains the negligible asset pricing response to autocratizations. Neither an increase in macroeconomic risk nor generic political risk can explain the results.
​with James Paron and Jessica Wachter
Revise and Resubmit, Review of Financial Studies
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Sovereign debt yields have declined dramatically over the last half-century. Standard explanations for this decline, including aging populations and increases in asset demand from abroad, encounter difficulties when confronted with the full range of evidence across asset classes. We propose instead that the decline in inflation and default risk caused falling interest rates, a phenomenon that is not unique to our century. We show that a model with investment, inventory storage, and sovereign default captures the decline in interest rates, the stability of equity valuation ratios, and the recent reduction in investment and output growth corresponding to the zero lower bound.
with Sylvain Catherine, James Paron, and Natasha Sarin
Reject and Resubmit, American Economic Review
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How are households exposed to interest-rate risk? When rates fall, households face lower future expected returns but those holding long-term assets—disproportionately the wealthy and middle-aged—experience capital gains. We study the hedging demand for long-term assets in a portfolio choice model. The optimal interest-rate sensitivity of wealth is hump-shaped over the life cycle. Within cohorts, it increases with wealth and earnings. These predictions fit observed patterns in the United States, suggesting a relatively efficient distribution of interest-rate risk. By protecting workers from rate fluctuations, Social Security limits the welfare consequences of rising wealth inequality when rates fall.
​with Marco Grotteria and S. Lakshmi Naaraayanan
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​This paper investigates the informational role of lobbyists in the context of foreign lobbying in the United States. Using Department of Justice data on contacts between foreign governments and US legislators, we show that exogenous shocks to these connections influence foreign aid, tariff legislation, and corporate subsidies to foreign firms. Subsidies to connected foreign firms are associated with lower local employment, challenging the view that lobbyists provide technical expertise for better policymaking. However, subsidies to connected firms increase incumbent legislators' vote shares suggesting that foreign lobbying may still deliver valuable political information. Overall, our findings highlight the nature of the information channel of lobbying and underscore the broad economic significance of foreign lobbying in the US.