Working Papers
Spend or Invest? Analyzing MPC Heterogeneity Across Three Stimulus Programs
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4270518
Abstract: I employ data gathered by an account aggregator app covering the universe of user transactions to study the effects of three waves of stimulus checks on U.S. households’ investments, consumption, and savings. I analyze within-person variation in consumption sensitivity showing that higher liquidity and debt levels lead to smaller consumption responses. Using relative timing of stimulus and tax refunds, I illustrate the role of liquidity. Lastly, I estimate marginal propensities to invest and show a strong effect on market participation. There is a significant gender gap in the use of funds for investment.
Retail Investors’ Cryptocurrency Investments, with V. Pursiainen
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4270518
Abstract: We use transaction data gathered by a large fintech firm to study retail investors’ investments in cryptocurrencies. Crypto investors tend to be young, male, high-income, and live in wealthy urban areas with high levels of self-employment and low levels of altruism. Crypto investments are positively associated with stock investments and the use of robo-investing apps, as well as with gambling and the use of round numbers. Net flows into cryptocurrencies are negatively correlated with short-term past returns but positively with longer-term ones. Historical high and low price points also seem to matter. Personal initial experiences of crypto returns at adoption affect subsequent crypto investments. Investors exhibit little market timing ability, but controlling for the time of entry, women do better and stock investors worse.
Targeted Monetary Policy, Dual Rates and Bank Risk Taking, with F. Barbiero, M. Dimou, and L. Burlon
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4170361
Abstract: We assess whether central bank credit operations influence the size and composition of bank credit in a negative interest rate environment. We exploit confidential information from the newly established European credit registry to capture bank lending conditions and bank risk taking. For identification, we use high-frequency reactions of bank bonds around the announcement of the April 2020 recalibration of the ECB’s Targeted Longer-Term Refinancing Operations (TLTROs). We find that the credit easing measures had a strong positive effect on bank credit, even when controlling for possible confounding factors. The increase in lending was not accompanied by excessive risk-taking, especially for banks with low intermediation margin, that is, those that were poised to benefit the most from TLTROs’ borrowing rates below the interest rates on central bank reserves.
Beyond the Headline: How Personal Inflation Exposure Shapes Households’ Financial Choices, with C. Basten and M. Kukk
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4270518
Abstract: Using unique account-level data from a high inflation period in Estonia in 2005-11 and interactive fixed effect estimation, we find individual consumption to depend on personal beyond national headline inflation. Foreign shocks to selected goods’ inflation affect disproportionately households with greater consumption basket weights on these goods and make them increase consumption by an extra 1.3% per percentage point of higher inflation exposure, financed with more net borrowing. Indebted households respond stronger, consistent with a debt depreciation effect. Resulting extra demand for goods with higher inflation can reinforce inflation, letting future inflation depend on its current distribution.
Jan Toczynski 