Using US Supreme Court’s narrow-decision on Shelby v. Holder as a shock that diluted voting rights of Black Americans in covered counties, we document the relationship between political voice and economic decision-making. We show fewer Black Americans buy homes after their de-facto disenfranchisement, reflected through lower mortgage applications. Among those who apply for mortgages, there is a flight to Black lenders. Leveraging individual-level survey data, we show confidence in government and financial institutions plays a significant role in driving these effects. Our findings demonstrate that the effects of disenfranchisement extend beyond the ballot box to fundamental economic decisions like homeownership.

What are the aggregate effects of deposit shocks? Using the granular-instrumental-variable methodology, we identify the deposit elasticity of economic growth to be 1.49 and the money multiplier to be 1.24. We construct deposit shocks by combining the within-bank geographic concentration of deposits—where, on average, 30% of deposits are concentrated in a single county—with local natural disasters. Natural disasters in deposit-concentrated areas negatively affect bank deposits and amplify through bank internal capital markets. These shocks can explain 5.80% of the variation in economic growth. Lender and borrower-side frictions are critical for the aggregation of local shocks.

Mortgage-borrowing restrictions, including caps on loan-to-value (LTV) and payment-to-income (PTI) ratios, are widely understood to affect housing markets by tightening or relaxing household credit constraints. This paper shows that these policies also shape housing market outcomes by altering homebuyers' expectations. I study a major relaxation of LTV/PTI limits in South Korea in 2014, which signaled that the government would take a more supportive stance toward the housing market. After the reform, the strongest price increases occurred in areas where the borrowing limits were of limited importance but where house prices were sensitive to shifts in expectations. In these areas, homebuyers became more optimistic and engaged in speculative home purchases. Some of this activity was financed through interest-free, peer-to-peer lending that was not subject to formal credit regulations. Taken together, the findings show that mortgage policies influence housing markets not only through their direct, mechanical effects on credit constraints but also by shaping how homebuyers form expectations about future conditions.

Informed landlords adjust rent more flexibly to expand their market share, fueling rent inflation. They secure a 0.5% higher annual rental income through an additional 0.3% rent adjustment, regardless of whether the market is in a downturn or recovery. In volatile periods, this advantage grows further: they achieve a 1.7% higher annual income through an additional 0.8% rent adjustment. Although frictions in rent adjustments contribute to these outcomes, they do not fully explain the pricing patterns observed among informed landlords—pricing expertise is key. These findings suggest that informed institutional landlords lead the rental market through flexible pricing strategies, and market volatility disproportionately challenges uninformed mom-and-pop landlords, who make up the majority of the rental market.

When central banks loosen monetary policy, credit availability increases, generating upwards pressure on asset prices. This paper analyzes the "credit channel" of monetary policy transmission in a unique institutional setting: the Chonsei system in the Korean housing market, in which rental tenants make interest-free loans to landlords in exchange for paying no rent. We show that, as Chonsei interest rates approach zero, the size of Chonsei loans grows unboundedly, exerting strong upwards pressure on house prices. We verify the model’s predictions empirically. Calibrating the model to the data, we find that a simple policy – imposing a proportional tax on Chonsei deposits – can substantially dampen the passthrough of interest rate changes to deposit size and house prices, providing potential benefits for financial stability.