Karsten Muller and I are excited to announce that we have begun the process of updating the Bank Ownership Database. This comprehensive resource will soon include ownership information for a large number of banks spanning from 1995 to 2022. Stay tuned for more updates and announcements!

In this paper (joint with Belinda Tracey) we shed new light on the relationship between the down payment requirement and housing wealth inequality. Studying the UK Help-to-Buy program we show that lowering the down payment requirement reduces housing wealth inequality by weakening the link between (parental) wealth and homeownership.  

Friday 28th October I will deliver my Inaugural Lecture “Financing Future Economic Growth” at the University of Amsterdam. I will talk about the importance of finance for economic growth and how improvement of finance for SMEs, in particular young, high-potential ones, will be a crucial factor generating future economic growth, lower long-term inflation and the transition to net-zero.

Inaugural Lecture [PDF]

New research with Ralph de Haas and Vincent Sterk studying dynamics of European startups using unsupervised learning . We distinguish five starts-up types: capital intensive, cash-rich, high leverage, large and basic. We show that shifting the composition of startup cohorts can boost macroeconomic performance.

In this paper Belinda Tracey and I study the UK Help-to-Buy program. We show that relaxing the down payment constraint positively affects household consumption in addition to stimulating housing market activity. Our findings point to a further link between the housing market and household consumption that does not operate through the home purchase and housing wealth channels.