Language
English (en)
Date of Award
5-10-2024
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Chair and Committee
Todd Gormley
Committee Members
na
Abstract
My dissertation focuses on two broad questions. First, what is the role of financial regulation in alleviating financial distress of households? Second, how do labor markets shape individual financial outcomes? In Chapter 1, I document a positive impact of foreclosure delays — a widely used measure of foreclosure prevention — on labor income. I present novel evidence showing that foreclosure delays can foster sustained economic recovery through local labor markets by allowing borrowers to re-evaluate their employment decisions and address the root causes of their financial distress. To conduct this study, I leverage a temporary rule introduced by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in June 2021. This change prohibited mortgage servicers from initiating foreclosures between September and December 2021 on loans that missed their fifth mortgage payment on or after March 2020. I uncover a noteworthy increase in income, resulting from a four months foreclosure delay and attribute this to increased job mobility. The granularity of the dataset allows me to establish temporary liquidity and housing stability as potential mechanisms. This research carries substantial policy implications, underscoring the potential effectiveness of well-designed, short-term borrower protection policies. These policies can yield significant real-world effects and promote financial stability. In Chapter 2, I investigate how firm monopsony power in local labor markets impacts households’ ability to withstand adverse shocks. Rising labor market concentration and firms’ influence on wages can hinder households’ ability to adjust income during financial difficulties, exacerbating their distress. Using gasoline price fluctuations following the Russia-Ukraine conflict as a natural experiment, I find that individuals without access to public transportation, and facing longer commutes to work, experience higher credit card defaults and revolving debt burdens. High-monopsony employers limit individuals’ capacity to negotiate better wages, particularly affecting financially constrained households. Overall, this study highlights local labor markets’ role in transmitting macroeconomic shocks through household balance sheets. In Chapter 3 with Naser Hamdi and Ankit Kalda we examine whether labor markets can effectively discipline financial misconduct. Our findings indicate that finance professionals who experience involuntary separation for misconduct tend to earn higher income than those laid off for no-fault reasons. We attribute this to assortative matching in the finance labor market, where firms prone to misconduct also hire such individuals, offering them a wage premium. Our results are unique to the finance sector. The absence of a disciplining mechanism in the finance sector is likely due to the nature of financial products which rely on future cash flows, making misconduct harder to detect.
Recommended Citation
Pal, Avantika, "Essays in Household and Labor Finance" (2024). Olin Business School Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 40.
https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/olin_etds/40