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 do not have enough insurance coverage to rebuild their house after a total loss. Using contract-level data from 24 homeowners insurance companies in Colorado, we show wide differences in average underinsurance across insurers that persist conditional on policyholder characteristics. Underinsurance matters for disaster recovery. Across households that lost homes to a major wildfire, each 10 p.p. increase in underinsurance reduces the likelihood of filing a rebuilding permit within a year by 4 p.p.. To understand why consumers purchase underinsured policies, we build a discrete choice insurance demand model. The results suggest that policyholders treat insurers that write less coverage as if they set lower premiums, forgoing options to get more coverage at the same premium from other insurers -- a pattern we call coverage neglect. Our findings suggest that coverage limits are either not salient to consumers or difficult to estimate without the input of insurance agents. Under a counterfactual without coverage neglect, consumer surplus increases by $290 per year, or 10% of annual premiums, on average.

Works in Progress

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