Abstract: Using bankruptcy filing information for parents matched to administrative data on their children and leniency of the randomly assigned judges as an instrument, we document the effect of parental bankruptcy protection on children's income and intergenerational mobility. We find that children whose parents receive Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection earn $1,755 (or 5.6%) higher annual income relative to those whose parents file for but do not receive protection. Our results are increasing in the duration lapsed from filing and over the life cycle of children. Parental bankruptcy protection leads to higher income by 2.8% at age 20, 8.8% at age 25 and 35.4% at age 40. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that for one dollar of debt relief granted to parents through Chapter 13 protection their children earn two dollars more in adjusted present value of lifetime earnings. Children of parents who receive protection are more likely to be in the top tercile of income distribution, which is driven by an increase in intergenerational upward mobility for children whose parents receive protection rather than an increase in downward mobility for those whose parents were denied protection. These results highlight the potential role of bankruptcy protection and debt relief more broadly in helping improve intergenerational mobility for low-income distressed households. Finally, our results are most consistent with higher investment in education and skill-development as the mechanism contributing to these findings. We do not find support for neighborhood effects driving our estimates.

Abstract: We document a political partisanship-based assessment gap that imposes disproportionate fiscal burdens on political minorities. Using property tax data matched with voter registration records across the United States, we find that political minorities—Republicans in Democratic-majority counties and Democrats in Republican-majority counties—face higher property tax assessments than the political majority within the same tax jurisdiction, despite being subject to identical tax administration and rates. This partisan assessment gap is economically significant, representing 40-50% of the previously documented racial assessment gap. In Republican counties, the gap is driven by within-neighborhood variation, while in Democratic counties, it is driven by variation across neighborhoods, enabled by higher levels of residential partisan segregation. Leveraging novel hand-collected historical data on assessor identities and their political affiliations, we show that assessor bias contributes to these gaps: disparities are weaker when the assessor shares the political affiliation of the minority group and larger otherwise. Moreover, the gap's magnitude varies with the partisan composition of county commissions---increasing with aligned political control and decreasing with minority party representation. These findings demonstrate that property tax assessments, though ostensibly neutral, become tools for redistributing fiscal burdens along partisan lines and generate inequities in homeownership costs.

Abstract: CEOs weigh the benefits of advising against the costs of increased monitoring when deciding whether to share private information with independent directors. We hypothesize that such sharing occurs when CEOs and directors abnormally sell shares simultaneously. Our findings indicate that sharing is more prevalent in complex firms, where advice is more valuable, and in firms with powerful CEOs, where the impact of monitoring is dampened. Informing directors enhances innovation, M&A, and investment outcomes. However, the endogeneity of the CEO’s decision to share constrains improvements in monitoring outcomes. Our new measure of connectedness explains adverse compensation and employment outcomes beyond co-option and social ties, offering a new perspective on board independence for regulators, researchers, and proxy advisors.