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In this paper, we conduct an RCT of customer-supplier firm pairs and treat with information one firm in a pair. The treatment effects on the directly treated & connected firms are of comparable magnitudes, highlighting the role of inter-firm communication

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We also find no difference in failure rates for OTS and non-OTS supervised thrifts once thrift characteristics are controlled for.

Second, we calculate several measures of risk during the housing boom period and find that mutual thrifts increased their risk less than stock thrifts.

Furthermore, we find that a concentration in construction and land development loans is the only type of loan concentration that is predictive of failure.

To investigate this difference, we first estimate a probit model of thrift failure over the housing bust and show that this difference holds even when controlling for local economic shocks and differences in thrift characteristics.

During the housing bust, mutuals failed at a much lower rate than stock thrifts.

In this new working paper, researchers compare the performance of community-bank-sized mutual and stock thrifts during the housing boom of 2001-06 and the housing bust of 2007-13.

New Working Paper: Organizational Form and Thrift Risk During the US Housing Boom and Bust

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This matters as the authors find communication to be symmetric upstream vs downstream, while propagation via actions is asymmetric.

The authors show that spillover effects on the connected firms' expectations are driven by inter-firm communication, as opposed to observable actions.

Firms increase prices and employment in response to higher expected future real GDP growth, but reduce prices, investment, and employment in response to greater uncertainty about future real GDP growth.

The direct and spillover effects on expectations and actions are significant and of comparable magnitude.

. on the expectations and actions of both the directly treated firms (direct effect) and connected firms that did not directly receive information (spillover effect).

In a randomized control trial of customer-supplier firm pairs in New Zealand, researchers treat with information one firm in a pair and analyze the treatment's effects. .

New Working Paper: Supply Chain Networks and the Macroeconomic Expectations of Firms