My published (public) work has focused on the financial history of the US, particularly in the residential mortgage market and during the Great Depression.  

My CV (June 2025) 

Housing finance history

• Blockbusting in the postwar US (working paper) (with Daniel Hartley) Link

  • Covered by WBEZ

• Reassessing the magnitudes of housing price declines and the use of leverage during the Depressions of the 1890s and 1930s Real Estate Economics (2022) Link

• Short-term residential mortgage contracts in American economic history  Explorations in Economic History (2020) Link

• New Evidence on Redlining by Federal Housing Programs in the 1930s (with Price Fishback, Ken Snowden, and Thomas Storrs) , Journal of Urban Economics (2024).  Link

  • Discussed on The Weeds. and Governing. Cited in the 2021 Economic Report of the President, and the PAVE Report. 

• Collateral Damage: The Impact of Foreclosures on New Home Mortgage Lending in the 1930s  (with Price Fishback, Sebastian Fleitas, and Ken Snowden) - Journal of Economic History, (2020) vol. 80 no.3, pp. 853-885. Link

• "The Prolonged Resolution of Troubled Real Estate Lenders during the 1930s," in Housing and Mortgage Markets in Historical Perspective (2014), edited by Price Fishback, Kenneth Snowden, and Eugene White. National Bureau of Economic Research Series and University Of Chicago Press. Link

• "The New Deal and the Origins of the Modern American Real Estate Loan Contract," Explorations in Economic History, vol. 50 (2013), no. 4, pp. 548- 566. (With Kenneth Snowden). Link

• Well worth saving: How the new deal safeguarded home ownership. (2013) National Bureau of Economic Research Series on Long-Term Factors in Economic Development. Chicago and London: University Of Chicago Press. (With Price Fishback and Kenneth Snowden.) Link

• "The Incredible HOLC? Mortgage Relief during the Great Depression." Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking (2011).  Link

• "A Primer on Farm Mortgage Debt Relief Programs during the 1930s." (2013) Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2013-33, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.  Link

• "Housing in American Economic History," Oxford Handbook of American Economic History (2018). (With Daniel Fetter and Kenneth Snowden.) Link

Urban history

• Destruction, Policy, and the Evolving Consequences of Washington, DC’s 1968 Civil Disturbance (working paper) (with Leah Brooks and Stan Veuger) Forthcoming, Review of Economics and Statistics Link 

  • Discussed in the NY Times.

Banking + banking history

• Rushing To Judgment and the Banking Crisis of 2023 (with Steven Kelly) Link

• Understanding the Speed and Size of Bank Runs in Historical Comparison (2023) Link

  • Covered by the FT. 

• Old-Fashioned Deposit Runs - Forthcoming, Quarterly Journal of Finance. Link

  • Cited by the Federal Reserve, California and NY regulators, and the FSOC.

• "The Incentives of Large Sophisticated Creditors to Run on a Too Big to Fail Financial Institution." Journal of Financial Stability (2019) (With Mark Carlson). Link

• "When Good Investments Go Bad: The Contraction in Community Bank Lending After the 2008 GSE Takeover." Journal of Financial Intermediation (2016) vol. 27, pp. 68-88.  (With Tara Rice). Link

• Credit Availability and the Collapse of the Banking Sector in the 1930s (2015) Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking. Link

Federal Reserve history

• The Speed of Discount Window Lending:  A Look Back at 1985." (2024) Link

• "Stigma and the Discount Window" (2017) (With Mark Carlson) Link

• "Yield Curve Control in the United States, 1942 to 1951" (2021). Link

Essays for the Federal Reserve History website

These essays are intended for the general public, researchers, and policymakers as a public good as they seek information about the history of the Fed.  In an effort to allow the Fed History website to be a living history, these essays are not attributed to me so that they can be updated in the future as new information about the past comes to light. 

• Continental Illinois Link

• Redlining Link

• Community Reinvestment Act Link

• Community Development Link

• Native Americans and the Fed Link

• Fedwire Link

• ACH Link

• Checks Link

• Cash Link

• Point-of-sale systems Link

• Japanese Americans during WWII Link

• HOEPA Link

• Bank capital standards Link

• Transparency Link

• Federal Home Loan Bank Advances Link

Insurance history

• Financial crises at insurance companies: learning from the demise of the National Surety Company during the Great Depression Financial History Review (2018). Link

Macro-ish history

• "Hoover’s Truce: Wage Rigidity in the Onset of the Great Depression." Journal of Economic History, vol. 70 (2010) no. 4, pp. 843-870.  Link

Crypto

• A Retrospective on the Crypto Runs of 2022  (2023) (with Radhika Patel) Link.  

  • Covered by Matt Levine at Bloomberg, and the WSJ.

Auto lending

• "What Happened to Subprime Auto Loans During the Covid-19 Pandemic?" (2021) (with Tanya Bakshi) Link

Book reviews 

• Review of "The Young Fed" by Mark Carlson, in Business Economics Link

• Review of "American Bonds" by Sarah L. Quinn, in Journal of Economic History (2020). Link

• Review of "Monetary policy and the onset of the Great Depression: the myth of Benjamin Strong as decisive leader" by Mark Toma, in Economic History Review (2013). Link