Working Papers

Money to Burn: Crowdfunding Wildfire Recovery with Tony Cookson & Philip Mulder (R&R at Journal of Finance)

Person-to-person crowdfunding is an increasingly important form of disaster relief, yet its distribution is poorly understood. Linking GoFundMe campaigns from a major wildfire to property and household credit records, we find that—holding property losses constant—higher-income households are 12 p.p. more likely to have campaigns and raise over 25% more. These disparities reflect unequal access to social capital: broader donor bases, more non-local ties, greater advocacy by friends, and more generous donors. Donors appear influenced by social pressure in online crowdfunding. These mechanisms mirror national patterns and underscore crowdfunding’s limitations as a tool for equitable disaster relief.

Coverage Neglect in Homeowners Insurance with Tony Cookson & Philip Mulder  (formally "Shopping for Underinsurance") 

Most homeowners lack sufficient insurance coverage to fully rebuild their homes after a total loss. Using contract-level data from Colorado, we document substantial variation in underinsurance across insurers that cannot be explained by policyholder characteristics. Instead, insurer attributes—such as local market experience and brand quality—predict more complete coverage. These differences have meaningful consequences for disaster recovery: among households that lost homes in a major wildfire, those insured by low-coverage firms were less likely to rebuild and more likely to sell without rebuilding. To understand why consumers do not fully insure, we estimate a discrete choice model of insurance demand. The results indicate that many homeowners could obtain greater coverage at no additional cost by switching insurers. This pattern suggests that consumers pay limited attention to differences in quoted coverage limits, a phenomenon we call coverage neglect.  In partial equilibrium, we estimate that coverage neglect reduces consumer surplus by $290 per year—equivalent to about 10% of average annual premiums.

Works in Progress

For a list of works in progress, see: Curriculum vitae (CV)