Research

Working Papers

“How Do Investment Behaviors Transmit Across Generations? The Effects of Parents and Neighborhoods”[latest draft: September 2026]

with Clara Egehoved Tørsløv

Abstract: Financial outcomes are known to be highly persistent across generations. However, less is known about the exact process through which specific investment behaviors develop based on features of one’s childhood. Using Danish administrative data and two quasi-experimental designs, we find a significant effect of childhood exposure to the behaviors of one’s own parents, and of the parents of one’s peers, on a child’s investment behaviors in adulthood. We perform tests to shed light on the underlying structure of the “production function” of investment behaviors and find evidence of substitutability of exposure to own-parents and peer-parents. In exploring mechanisms, we find that direct transfers of public equity and the sharing of financial intermediaries cannot fully explain the parent-child transmission, suggesting that other channels, such as risk preferences or financial savvy, play a role.

Publications

“Transaction Costs and the Take-up of Social Safety Net Programs: Evidence from the Combined Application Project” (undergraduate thesis) [link]

February 2026, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.

Abstract: This paper studies the effect of transaction costs on the take-up and targeting of social safety net programs in the context of multi-program enrollment by exploiting the Combined Application Project (CAP), a widespread state-level policy designed to encourage enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) among elderly recipients of Supplemental Security Income. I show that the CAP increased SNAP take-up by 8-13 percentage points, or about 17-24%. The increase was suggestively larger among those with a higher probability of being food insecure. Exploiting heterogeneity in the format of the CAP across states, I find that “auto-enrollment” most effectively increased SNAP take-up.