Posts

Like many, I read the article, “China Orders U.S. to Shut Chengdu Consulate, Retaliating for Houston” in the New York Times today. My reaction? It makes me sad. A bitter sadness I cannot even begin to describe. For one, Chengdu is such a great city. I remember visiting a friend there back in May 2016 and seeing the U.S. embassy – it seems so much more real when you begin to grasp that people lived and worked here, calling Chengdu their home away from home. [Read More]

NBC News Senior Financial Reporter Gretchen Morgenson covered some research I have been working on as a co-author with Stephane Verani and Nathan Foley-Fisher in an article titled “How Safe is Your Pension.” The article is very thorough. As we argue in our paper, the business models of the largest U.S. life insurers have made them more vulnerable to a shock to the corporate sector (such as a pandemic like COVID-19), and many of these life insurers have completed billions of dollars of pension risk transfers over the last decade from a growing number of Fortune 500 companies. [Read More]

In a new paper co-authored with Stephane Verani and Nathan Foley-Fisher, we study the restructuring of financial intermediation in the United States since the 2007-2009 financial crisis. We examine the channel through which life insurance companies lend to corporations by arranging collateralized loan obligations through their affiliated asset managers, as well as through direct lending to corporations via on-balance sheet financing of commercial real estate mortgages and corporate loans. Figures 1-3: Private Debt Issued by the Asset Managers of U. [Read More]