Wrote another post based on a video with Markus Brunnermeier
Use LLMs to lessen the large fixed costs of managing and organizing large databases. I use the setting of HMDA mortgage data to show how a massive 250m row db can turn into a trivial data exercise thanks to DuckDB + Claude Code.
Did a series of videos with Markus Brunnermeier on Claude Code (more to come)
Video 1: Getting Started with CC
open.substack.com/pub/paulgp/p...
Figure shows the average change in monthly payments upon internal refinancing: realised (red) vs passive counterfactual (blue). The passive counterfactual assumes borrowers roll over remaining debt at expiration without extra payments or contract adjustments. The surge in inflation following the COVID-19 pandemic prompted many central banks to raise interest rates sharply. This column combines data from a large German bank, a borrower survey, and a letter experiment to show that mortgage-holders’ actions substantially reduce the impact of higher rates on monthly payments when their fixed rate ends. Survey responses indicate high informedness and a strong propensity to prepare, while the letter increases awareness of available options and raises refinancing activity among borrowers close to expiration. Overall, financial strains on mortgagors appear limited despite much higher rates, and mortgagors’ anticipatory actions affect the transmission of monetary policy.
Mortgage-holders’ actions substantially reduce the impact of higher interest rates on monthly payments when their fixed rate ends. Financial strains on mortgagors appear limited despite much higher rates.
@fuster.bsky.social @gianiv.bsky.social et al.
cepr.org/voxeu/column...
#EconSky
📣Out today📣:
Report on #wealth and #inheritance in #Switzerland, based on close to 17 million tax records
190 pages of facts & figures, put together with @fuster.bsky.social, @izmartinez86.bsky.social & Falone Moseka, and supported by E4S (@heclausanne.bsky.social, EPFL, IMD)
👉 lnkd.in/dPuCknGm
Dies ist nur ein kleiner Vorgeschmack auf eine deskriptive Studie zu Vermögen und Erbschaften in der Schweiz, gemeinsam mit Kolleg.innen von der EPFL und ETHZ.
Veröffentlichung anfangs 2026.
Stay tuned.
4/4
@fuster.bsky.social @izmartinez86.bsky.social
👇!
Als Teil seines "Entlastungspakets 27" will der Bund das Budget des SNF @snf-fns-ch.bsky.social um 10% kürzen.
Wäre das wirklich klug, ausgerchnet in dem Moment, wo uns die US-Regierung das Feld freimacht im internationalen Wettbewerb um Top-Talente (👇)?
1/2
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
An excellent initiative!
Call for papers, submission deadline February 21 (i.e., soon!):
Sixth annual SNB-CIF Conference on Cryptoassets and Financial Innovation, to be held in Zurich on June 20, with keynote speaker Urban Jermann (Wharton).
www.snb.ch/en/services-...
#econsky
Highly policy-relevant!
"Pricing Liquidity Support: A PLB for Switzerland" by Monnet, Niepelt, and Taudien
For instance, they estimate that the too-big-to-fail status allowed UBS Group AG alone to gain at least USD 2.9 billion in 2022.
repec.vwiit.ch/dp/dp2501.pdf
Call for papers alert -- The Philly Fed and University of Delaware are hosting the second edition of the Fintech and Financial Institutions conference in April, featuring great research and a keynote by Stefan Nagel -- submit by Jan 14, you wont regret it :) www.philadelphiafed.org/calendar-of-...
For those who didn't make it to #ASSA2025: strongly recommend @sendhil.bsky.social's AEA distinguished lecture, available at www.aeaweb.org/webcasts/202... (starting at minute 16)!
An academic paper has excellent empirical evidence & hypotheses that perfectly match the patterns in the data.
One catch: AI wrote the hypotheses after seeing the results.
Should this matter?
New paper w/ Robert Novy-Marx on AI-Powered (Finance) Scholarship🧵
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Are you planning to attend the 2025 ASSA meetings in San Francisco? All ASSA activities have been planned for three ASSA headquarters hotels. Employees at two of these hotels – the Hilton San Francisco Union Square and the San Francisco Marriott Union Square – are on strike and asking people to not meet, eat, nor sleep in the hotels. At the third headquarters hotel – the Parc 55 by Hilton – employees voted to authorize their leaders to call a strike at any moment. Yesterday, ASSA stated that allied associations can move planned sessions to alternative physical locations in San Francisco at their own expense and ASSA will facilitate updating of location information within their program system. This means there is a path to meaningful participation in the conference without crossing picket lines. Did you book your housing through ASSA? If so, then you are booked at a hotel where workers are either currently on strike, where they authorized a strike, or where the union says there’s a real risk employees will be on strike in early January. All the ASSA’s preferred hotels for housing are in one of these three categories, as detailed below. The hotel workers union has asked people not to patronize these hotels. What can a social scientist do as we face a conflict between our desires to: participate in the ASSA annual meeting in San Francisco taking place at hotels—both for meeting space and lodging—where workers currently are on strike or at risk of striking, respect the people employed by the hotels and their request of each of us to not meet, sleep, or eat in striking hotels as part of their wider local and national campaign to lift the industry’s job quality? This blog walks through background and different strategies available to each of us.
Attending #ASSA2025?
Want to know how to navigate your options with respect to hotels, food, & sessions given SF hotel workers' strike?
@shirkandsteal.bsky.social @jennifercohen.bsky.social & I have you covered. Blog w/sign up for email updates.
#EconSky
aaronsojourner.org/hotel-worker...
The submission deadline for the BIS-CEPR-Gerzensee-SFI conference on Financial Intermediation (formerly the "Lenzerheide conference") is October 31. Submit your papers! Call for papers here: mailchi.mp/cepr/bis-cep...