Profits Without Prosperity
Five years after the official end of the Great Recession, corporate profits are high, and the stock market is booming. Yet most Americans are not sharing in the recovery. While [...]
Household Wealth Trends in the United States, 1962-2013: What Happened over the Great Recession?
Asset prices plunged between 2007 and 2010 but then rebounded from 2010 to 2013. The most telling finding is that median wealth plummeted by 44 percent over years 2007 to [...]
Syndicated Loan Spreads and the Composition of the Syndicate
During the past decade, non-bank institutional investors are increasingly taking larger roles in the corporate lending than they historically have played. These non-bank institutional lenders typically have higher required rates [...]
Racial Disparities in Savings Behavior for a Continuously Employed Cohort
The wealth gap has reached record highs. At the same time there has been substantial proliferation of 401(k) savings accounts as the dominant retirement savings vehicle, and these accounts make [...]
Learning to Take Risks? The Effect of Education on Risk-Taking in Financial Markets
We investigate whether acquiring more education when young has long-term effects on risk-taking behavior in financial markets and whether the effects spill over to spouses and children. There is substantial [...]
Career Funnelling: How Elite Students Learn to Define and Desire ‘Prestigious’ Jobs
Elite universities are credited as launch points for the widest variety of meaningful careers. Yet, year after year at the most selective universities, nearly half the graduating seniors head to [...]
On the Distribution of the Welfare Losses of Large Recessions
How big are the welfare losses from severe economic downturns, such as the U.S. Great Recession? How are those losses distributed across the population? In this paper we answer these [...]
Family Descent as a Signal of Managerial Quality: Evidence from Mutual Funds
We study the relation between mutual fund managers’ family backgrounds and their professional performance. Using hand-collected data from individual Census records on the wealth and income of managers’ parents, we [...]
Why Your 401(k) Fees Aren’t Lower
So although the Vanguard literature may estimate 0.25% for the adviser’s fee, nothing prevents an adviser from collecting more—0.50% or even 1%—to advise a plan. How big a difference is [...]
Debt and Financial Vulnerability on the Verge of Retirement
We analyze older individuals’ debt and financial vulnerability using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and the National Financial Capability Study (NFCS). Specifically, in the HRS we examine [...]