research

Journal Articles

2025

1. The Impact of Mandatory Central Clearing on Interest Rate Swaps Pricing

   Arnob Alam

   2025

   Job Market Paper

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   Mandatory central clearing was the keystone derivatives market reform in the Dodd-Frank era. This paper examines the impact of the mandate on interest rate swaps pricing. Using data from Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation’s Swaps Data Repository around the time of the central clearing mandate implementation and using Canadian-dollar denominated contracts, which were not subject to the clearing mandate as a comparison group, a 13-14 bps increase in swap premia is observed for US-dollar denominated contracts. A similar increase of 7-8 bps is observed comparing contracts denominated in British Pounds (subject to clearing mandate) against contracts denominated in Swiss Francs (not subject to the clearing mandate). Since the central clearing mandate was implemented in phases, the cleared volume and impact on pricing can be examined per phase. Phase 1 of the mandate resulted in a 16 percentage point increase in cleared volumes and 5 bps increase in prices; phase 2 resulted in 12 percentage point increase in cleared volumes and an additional 3 bps increase in prices; although there was no increase in cleared volume in phase 3 prices increased 16 bps. The results are robust to additional controls for contract characteristics and alternative functional forms of the regression model.

2023

1. Care workers’ sense of responsibility, working conditions, and the quality of care in South Korea

   Shirin Arslan, Arnob Alam, Maria S Floro, and 2 more authors

   Philippine Review of Economics (Online ISSN 2984-8156), 2023

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   As countries like South Korea expand their paid care services, ensuring quality care has become critical. Since care work involves significant emotional labor, a worker’s sense of responsibility for the care recipient’s well-being affects the quality of care delivered. In this study, we explore this particular determinant of quality care that has been underexplored to better understand its nature. However, a worker’s sense of responsibility or commitment level is not static and varies depending on various factors including working conditions. Using 2018 Korean childcare and eldercare survey data, we empirically examine the relationship between a worker’s commitment levels and working conditions by conducting Tobit and generalized maximum entropy (GME) analyses. Results indicate that training, shorter commutes, predictable schedules, and easy interactions with the care recipient’s family are associated with higher levels of commitment. Our findings highlight the importance of supportive working conditions in promoting quality care.

2. When caregiving becomes burden: the gap between preferred amount of care time and actual amount of care time

   Seung-Eun Cha, Eunhye Kang, Maria Floro, and 2 more authors

   Social Indicators Research, 2023

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   This study examines the amount of excessive care work perceived among primary family caregivers of young children and aged family members in Korea and explores factors associated with the amount of their excessive care work. By using the 2018 Care Work and the Economy Project survey data collected from 1001 Korean primary family caregivers, this study estimates the amount of excessive care time of primary caregivers by calculating the difference in the actual and stated preferred amount of time for caregiving of children or aged family members and examines its determinants. Findings show primary child caregivers perform 20 h of excessive care per week while primary aged person caregivers perform 26.24 h of excessive care per week on average. Even if some excessive caregiving is redistributed from primary caregivers to their spouses, there remains an average of 14.36 h per week for childcare and 23.32 h per week for aged person care of excessive care time experienced by primary caregivers at the household level. Results of the generalized maximized entropy analyses show that for childcare, mothers who use longer hours of paid childcare service report a smaller amount of excessive care work. For aged person care, families with lower income, who live with the aged person, or with longer periods of caregiving report a larger amount of excessive care work at the household level. This study also highlights the role of attitudes towards gender roles, i.e., perceived fairness of care work within the household and the importance of government support for customized quality care services.

2022

1. The structure of risk-sharing networks

   Heath Henderson and Arnob Alam

   Empirical Economics, 2022

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   We examine the structure of risk-sharing networks in developing countries using data from the Tanzanian village of Nyakatoke. We first show that the Nyakatoke network exhibits: (1) the “small-world” phenomenon, where two households who are not themselves risk-sharing partners are separated only by a short chain of intermediaries; (2) preferential attachment, which is a network formation process where the probability of a household receiving a partner is proportional to that household’s existing number of partners; and (3) assortative mixing, as similarly connected households tend to link to each other. We then examine the implications of these features for network performance by comparing the Nyakatoke network to simulated networks with alternative structural traits. Our simulations show that the Nyakatoke network displays optimal or near-optimal performance along multiple dimensions. In particular, the Nyakatoke network has a notable ability to withstand perturbations of multiple types, a property that none of the counterfactual networks possess.

Miscellaneous

2025

1. NEWS for Riyadh, Saudia Arabia: Population-based Walking, Physical Activity, and Neighborhood Characteristics

   Kelly R. Everson and Arnob Alam

   2025

   Working Paper

2022

1. Quality of Care, Commitment Level, and Working Conditions: Understanding the Care Workers’ Perspective

   Shirin Arslan, Maria Floro, and Arnob Alam

   Jun 2022

   Conference Presentation

2018

1. The Structure of Risk-Sharing Networks

   Heath Henderson and Arnob Alam

   Apr 2018

   Conference Presentation