Scottish Journal of Political Economy (2021), Vol. 68(2)
with K. McQuinn and C. O’Toole
We investigate the impact of macroprudential policy on Irish households' perception of savings adequacy, with a particular focus on households intending to purchase a home. These measures tighten loan-to-value ratios and raise the entry cost for home purchase. We find that the measures have had a significant impact on savings constraints. Indeed, constrained potential buyers, who are planning to purchase, but not presently saving to buy a home, are the group most affected as the macroprudential rules increase the downpayment size required. Heterogeneous effects across households indicate younger, private renting households, and those with relatively uncertain cash flows.

Vessel queuing procedures at maritime ports may induce strategic changes in the polluting activities of transport operators. This paper documents a reduction in vessel emissions following the introduction of San Pedro Bay’s new ETA-based queuing system. Using geospatial vessel position data in monitored US coastal areas, alongside records of vessel departures at foreign ports of origin, I show that the global emissions of containership voyages servicing Los Angeles and Long Beach declined, on average, by 10%. The added certainty of vessel admittance times incentivized ships to slow their voyage speeds and strategically limit local wait times. However, guaranteed queue positions also attract greater commercial activity, which led to an overall deterioration in local air quality, despite per-vessel emissions falling.

Job Market Paper [Latest Version]
Using novel container traffic data at the port level, I document the empty container redistribution and nationally balanced exchange of container units between the US and Rest of the World. Upon preparing a partial equilibrium model of round trip trade, I calibrate and estimate a multi-country baseline scenario of US containerized trade and consider the effect of government intervention in which empty container use is restricted in order to stimulate US export activity. I find that policy backfires, resulting in a reduction in allocated shipping capacity, import price inflation and an overall decline in trade activity on net exporter round trip routes. For routes which exhibit a greater reliance on empty container returns, I find that these backfiring effects are greater in magnitude.

[Latest Version]
I document significant heterogeneity in the marginal effect of corruption on the underlying fixed costs of firm-level market participation, which in turn drives selection across firms into trade participation. The effect is particularly pronounced for domestically-owned and foreign affiliate firms engaged in trade, suggesting that underlying trade-related fixed costs are the most vulnerable parameters with respect to variation in host-country corruption.