These papers are working drafts of research which often appear in final form in academic journals. The published versions may differ from the working versions provided here.
SSRN Research Paper Series
The Social Science Research Network’s Research Paper Series includes working papers produced by Stanford GSB the Rock Center.
You may search for authors and topics and download copies of the work there.
Learning by Trading
How can we help individuals handle financial decisions in an increasingly complex environment? We explore an easily scalable avenue for improving financial understanding: learning by online trading in stocks. We randomly assign 1345 adults…
Learning and Risk Premiums in an Arbitrage-free Term Structure Model
We study the evolution of risk premiums on US Treasury bonds from the perspective of a real-time Bayesian learner RA who updates her beliefs using a dynamic term structure model. Learning about the historical dynamics of yields led to…
Just a Few Seeds More: Value of Network Information for Diffusion
Identifying the optimal set of individuals to first receive information (`seeds’) in a social network is a widely-studied question in many settings, such as the diffusion of information, microfinance programs, and new technologies. Numerous…
Operational Volatility and Synergistic Value in Vertically Integrated Energy Systems
We examine the magnitude of synergistic effects in vertically integrated energy systems that arise when the external market for an intermediate input (electricity) is imperfect and the two subsystems are subject to operational volatility in terms…
The Road Ahead for Solar PV Power
Over the past decade, solar photovoltaic (PV) power has experienced dramatic deployment growth coupled with substantial decreases in system prices. This article examines how solar PV power is currently positioned in the electricity marketplace…
Carpooling and the Economics of Self-Driving Cars
We study the interplay between autonomous transportation, carpooling, and road pricing. We discuss how improvements in these technologies, and interactions among them, will affect transportation markets. Our main results show how to achieve…
The Geography of Poverty and Nutrition: Food Deserts and Food Choices Across the United States
We study the causes of “nutritional inequality”: why the wealthy tend to eat more healthfully than the poor in the U.S. Using two event study designs exploiting entry of new supermarkets and households’ moves to healthier neighborhoods, we reject…
The Effects of Rent Control Expansion on Tenants, Landlords, and Inequality: Evidence from San Francisco
Revision Requested, American Economic Review
We exploit quasi-experimental variation in assignment of rent control to study its impacts on tenants, landlords, and the overall rental market. Leveraging new data tracking individuals…
Financing Transplant Costs of the Poor: A Dynamic Model of Global Kidney Exchange
In some developing nations, many end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients die because the costs of kidney transplantation and dialysis are beyond the reach of most citizens. In this paper, we analyze two proposals for extending kidney exchange to…
The Prospects for Renewable Hydrogen Production
Hydrogen has long been heralded as a potentially critical element in the transition to a low carbon economy. The recent sharp cost declines for renewable energy raise the question whether an economic case can be made to produce hydrogen from…
The Leverage Ratchet Effect
Firms’ inability to commit to future funding choices has profound consequences for capital structure dynamics. With debt in place, shareholders pervasively resist leverage reductions no matter how much such reductions may enhance firm value.…
When Should You Adjust Standard Errors for Clustering?
In empirical work in economics it is common to report standard errors that account for clustering of units. Typically, the motivation given for the clustering adjustments is that unobserved components in outcomes for units within clusters are…
The Long-Term Consequences of Teacher Discretion in Grading of High Stakes Tests
We examine the long-term consequences of teacher discretion in grading of high stakes tests. Bunching in Swedish math test score distributions reveal that teachers inflate students who have “a bad test day,” but do not discriminate based on…
Structured Embedding Models for Grouped Data
Word embeddings are a powerful approach for analyzing language, and exponential family embeddings (EFE) extend them to other types of data. Here we develop structured exponential family embeddings (S-EFE), a method for discovering embeddings that…
Optimal Capital Structure and Bankruptcy Choice: Dynamic Bargaining vs Liquidation
We model a firm’s optimal capital structure decision in a framework in which it may later choose to enter either Chapter 11 reorganization or Chapter 7 liquidation. Creditors anticipate equityholders’ ex-post reorganization incentives and price…
Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?
In many growth models, economic growth arises from people creating ideas, and the long-run growth rate is the product of two terms: the effective number of researchers and their research productivity. We present a wide range of evidence from…
Estimation and Inference of Heterogeneous Treatment Effects using Random Forests
Many scientific and engineering challenges — ranging from personalized medicine to customized marketing recommendations — require an understanding of treatment effect heterogeneity. In this paper, we develop a non-parametric causal forest for…
Dynamic Coordination and Intervention Policy
We model a dynamic economy with strategic complementarity among investors and endogenous government interventions that mitigate coordination failures. We establish equilibrium existence and uniqueness, and show that one intervention can affect…
Sampling-Based vs. Design-Based Uncertainty in Regression Analysis
Previously titled: Finite Population Causal Standard Errors
Consider a researcher estimating the parameters of a regression function based on data for all 50 states in the United States or on data for all visits to a website. What…