Hi! I’m a second-year PhD student in the environmental and natural resource economics group at Yale. I’m primarily interested in using tools from empirical IO and financial economics to study energy markets. Before coming to Yale, I was a research assistant at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in the Climate Risk Studies and Financial Intermediation groups. I hold a BA in Economics and Math from Coe College, a liberal arts college in my home state of Iowa.
Research
Abstract
Using unique property-level location, mortgage, flood risk, and FEMA flood map data for the entire US, we document that a significant number of dwellings are subject to flood risks that are not captured by official FEMA maps. Lenders are aware of this “un-mapped” risk. Large banks, in particular, originate fewer–and more expensive–loans for affected properties. In contrast, non-banks have taken the opportunity to increase their market share in these areas, while securitizing these loans more aggressively. All lenders sell large portions of their mortgages to properties in high-flood risk areas to GSEs and their conservative lending appears to have had an adverse effect in house prices in those areas.