The poor often delay seeking medical treatment, even when it is free, to avoid losing income due to missed workdays. I use a regression discontinuity design to show that access to credit can remedy this issue. I exploit a setting in Korea in which individuals below a certain income threshold are eligible for cheap credit. My main finding is that such individuals have a 46% lower probability of dying or disability than otherwise similar individuals who are ineligible for cheap credit. This reduction is partly due to the fact that the eligible individuals see a doctor more promptly than the ineligible individuals after the onset of disease symptoms, as reflected in a lower likelihood of emergency room visits. Further, these individuals start treatment on average 62 days earlier following their initial diagnosis. Another major determinant of the decline in mortality and disability is that eligible individuals with chronic diseases are more likely to visit clinics for regular treatment. I explicitly show that such differences in the timeliness of treatment are due to individuals with access to credit being 44% more likely to take time off from work to seek medical care. Overall, access to credit can make a life-or-death difference to the poor even when medical treatment is affordable.

Rating on a Behavioral Curve with Utpal Bhattacharya and Yu Zhang

Sell-side analysts rate on a behavioral curve. Although they claim to use objective criteria (like expected raw, market-adjusted, or industry-adjusted returns), we find that, even after controlling for these claims, their recommendations on a particular stock are negatively influenced by the few other stocks they have rated recently. Even stocks that are not in the same industry affect the ratings. This behavioral reference bias implies a trading strategy. The next day's alpha of a sophisticated trading strategy that incorporates this bias earns a 43% higher return compared to an unsophisticated strategy that uses rating information only.

• R&R at Journal of Corporate Finance

Access to Credit and Individual Occupational Choice with Vidhan Goyal 

The paper analyzes the effect of credit market frictions on labor mobility. We use a government credit program in Korea that sharply expanded credit access to some individuals but not others. Individuals eligible for credit were 37.5 percent more likely to switch jobs relative to those who were not eligible. The higher switching rates and subsequent wage improvements in response to improved access to credit suggests that credit frictions impede labor mobility. Furthermore, we find that individuals take greater risks when they have more credit; they exhibit a higher propensity to switch to employers in a different industry and move to different occupations at a higher rate.

Pathways to success: Divergent effects of mindsets on performance trajectory with Melody Chao, Allen Huang, and Anirban Mukhopadhyay