Economics Papers
Economics Papers
Home Financing Responses to Wildfire Risk Information and Insurance Availability (JMP) - with Michael Fogarty
Wildfire risk has become a key force shaping California’s housing market. We study home buyer responses to a 2021 reform that requires home sellers in California to disclose parcel-level wildfire risk and potential homeowners insurance constraints in designated fire-hazard zones. We show that following implementation of the risk disclosures, the share of all-cash purchases in fire hazard zones increased by 14 percentage points relative to mortgage-financed purchases. Concurrent with the rise in cash purchases, owner-occupancy fell by 13.2 percentage points, suggesting a reallocation of high-risk homes from primary residences toward second homes and vacation properties. The financing shifts are largest in state-managed wildfire areas, in older homes subject to tighter underwriting, and in ZIP codes with greater reliance on California’s homeowners insurer of last resort. While mortgage lenders require insurance, all-cash buyers may delay purchasing insurance, underinsure, or forgo insurance altogether. Thus, the shift from mortgage-financed to all-cash transactions reallocates climate risk away from insurers and towards individual households.
The current draft of this paper is available here.
Wildfire Exposure Shapes Prenatal Scarring and Selection - with Jenna Nobles and Marcos A. Rangel
Wildfires have reduced air quality in many communities in the U.S., with implications for multiple dimensions of health. We examine the intergenerational effects of wildfire exposure by estimating the health impact on the cohorts of infants exposed to air quality reductions during gestation. We advance this line of research by considering that environmental factors shape cohort health outcomes in two potentially competing ways: by shaping the health of surviving pregnancies and by shaping which pregnancies survive to become live births. We build rich georeferenced data on pregnancy outcomes with restricted vital statistics records, menstrual and pregnancy tracking app data, satellite data, and environmental data. We use spatially-referenced fixed effect specifications to demonstrate that fires causally reduce air quality in downwind communities, in comparison to those same communities prior to fire initiation, and in comparison to changes in air pollution in other communities that are not downwind. Using similar specifications, we show that upwind fires increase preterm birth among infants exposed in the first trimester. We also show that similar exposures increase the risk of pregnancy loss and decrease the secondary sex ratio of surviving cohorts. We use simulations to estimate how much larger effects on preterm birth can be when prenatal selection is incorporated. The findings reveal the substantial, cross-generational reach of fire pollution. They also introduce pregnancy success as a relevant economic outcome. The efficiency of reproductive labor — the probability that pregnancies will become live births — is sensitive to environmental hazards. By integrating data on early pregnancy, the study is among the first to empirically demonstrate the joint processes of scarring and selection that shape cohort health, even before birth.
A link for this paper will be available soon!
Covid Exposure, Conception, and Pregnancy - joint with Jenna Nobles and Marcos A. Rangel
The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a large toll on population health and well-being. We examine the consequences of maternal exposure on conception probabilities and pregnancy loss. Using CDC county-level infection rates, we identify county-specific spikes in COVID-19 activity and leverage the fact that, although infections peaked nationally in fall 2021, the timing of local peaks varied across places. Linking these data to menstrual and pregnancy tracking app records, we are in the process of estimating event-study models centered on each county’s peak to assess potential effects on two margins of reproductive health: time to conception and early pregnancy loss. While prior research has emphasized COVID-19’s impacts on birth outcomes, we advance this literature by studying how the pandemic shaped the ability to conceive and which pregnancies survived to become live births. Understanding determinants of pregnancy survival has important intergenerational implications for population health. Our findings underscore the need for ongoing attention to maternal and fetal health during pandemics and public health crises more broadly.
with Carolina Barbosa, Andrew Breck, Grant King, Yoojin Kook, Amanda Honeycutt, and Dominick Esposito
2022, Journal of Comparative Effectiveness Research, 11 (2)
Impact analysis of expanding anti-TNF therapy for Crohn’s disease
with Amanda Honeycutt, Andrew Breck, and Dominick Esposito
2022, Journal of Comparative Effectiveness Research, 11 (2)
with Laurel Bates, Amanda Honeycutt, Timothy A Green, and Paul G Farnham
2021, JAIDS Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, 88 (4), e28–e30
with Heidi S Harvie, Vivian W Sung, Simon J Neuwahl, Amanda A Honeycutt, Isuzu Meyer, Christopher J Chermansky, Shawn Menefee, Whitney K Hendrickson, Gena C Dunivan, Donna Mazloomdoost, and Marie G Gantz
2021, American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 225 (6), 651–e1
Validation of the Prevention Impacts Simulation Model (PRISM)
with Benjamin Yarnoff, Amanda Honeycutt, Christina Bradley, Olga Khavjou, Laurel Bates, Rachel Kaufmann, Lawrence Barker, and Peter Briss
2021, Preventing Chronic Disease, 18