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Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0009-0002-5142-4156

Date Available

11-1-2026

Year of Publication

2026

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College

Business and Economics

Department/School/Program

Economics

Faculty

Ana María Herrera

Faculty

Steven Lugauer

Abstract

This dissertation explores three distinct empirical topics in macroeconomics. The first essay examines how policy-induced bank competition affects the reallocation of credit across firms, exploiting the staggered interstate bank deregulation during the 1980s and 1990s. I find that increased competition leads to an immediate increase in short-term credit creation, followed by a delayed increase in credit destruction one year later, with long-term credit reallocation primarily driven by larger and older firms. The second essay studies how economic policy uncertainty affects firm-level credit and sales growth using a two-step estimator that combines k-means clustering with local projections to allow for heterogeneous responses across firm types. Results show that uncertainty increases net credit growth for High Liquidity firms but reduces it for High Leverage firms, while the response of sales growth is negative for all firm types on impact. The third essay explores how immigration affects the relationship between age structure and GDP volatility using U.S. state-level data from 1984– 2020. The birth rate IV shows that the positive effect of young share on volatility is concentrated in high-immigration states.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2026.182

Archival?

Archival

Funding Information

This paper is based on research supported by the NSF under Grants No. SES-2417534 and SES-2417535.

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