This paper takes an early look at the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a large and novel small business support program that was part of the initial policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We use new data on the distribution of PPP loans and high-frequency micro-level employment data to consider two dimensions of program targeting. First, we do not find evidence that funds flowed to areas more adversely affected by the economic effects of the pandemic, as measured by declines in hours worked or business shutdowns. If anything, funds flowed to areas less hard hit. Second, we find significant heterogeneity across banks in terms of disbursing PPP funds, which does not only reflect differences in underlying loan demand. The top-4 banks alone account for 36% of total pre-policy small business loans, but disbursed less than 3% of all PPP loans. Areas that were significantly more exposed to low-PPP banks received much lower loan allocations. As data become available, we will study employment and establishment responses to the program and the impact of PPP support on the economic recovery. Measuring these responses is critical for evaluating the social insurance value of the PPP and similar policies.

We show that trade credit in production networks is important for the transmission of unconventional monetary policy. We find that firms with bonds eligible for purchase under the European Central Bank’s Corporate Sector Purchase Program act as financial intermediaries and extend more trade credit to their customers. The increase in trade credit flows is more pronounced from core countries to periphery countries and towards financially constrained customers. Customers increase investment and employment in response to the additional financing, while suppliers with eligible bonds increase their customer base, potentially favoring upstream industry concentration. Our findings suggest that the trade credit channel of monetary policy produces heterogeneous effects on regions, industries, and firms.

Electric scooters are coming to New York and, with a little planning and preparation, they can safely thrive here. To understand how, it helps to start with some context.

“The Parable of the Good Samaritan is about a Jewish man unexpectedly receiving help from a despised enemy with whom he had serious religious differences.”

Over almost three decades prosecuting criminals, I’ve been threatened, had a Santeria curse put on me, and been called a “fu--ing a--hole” on more occasions than I can count. But until my column for USA Today last week, “Why I’m skeptical about Reade’s sexual assault claim against Biden,” I’d never been called a “rape apologist.”

Early May weather finally brought spring relief to my family weary from weeks of dreary weather and sheltering in place. Inexplicably a dance party had broken out; the boys, giddy from the arrival of two rabbits — pandemic pets — were dancing with their grandmother as my wife and I looked on, sipping evening cocktails. Then an absentminded Twitter check confronted me with the shocking video of Ahmaud Arbery, a young black Georgian, being hunted down and killed by two white men.

Lynbrook, L.I.: The news outlets have not covered the way that the smallest small businesses have been overlooked during the pandemic. As a Schedule C tax filer, I am eligible to collect Pandemic Unemployment Assistance under the CARES Act. I applied for PUA on March 16. I have been certifying for benefits every week. This entire time, my online account with the state Department of Labor says that my case is still pending.

There were two Reggies in New York City.

The claim seeks damages in connection with the release of cellphone pictures taken by Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies at the scene of the Jan. 26 tragedy in Calabasas.

There were two Reggies in New York City.

Emergency department visits are costly to providers and to patients. We use the Flint water crisis to test if an increase in office visits reduced avoidable emergency room visits. In September 2015, the city of Flint issued a lead advisory to its residents, alerting them of increased lead levels in their drinking water, resulting from the switch in water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River. Using Medicaid claims for 2013-2016, we find that this information shock increased the share of enrollees who had lead tests performed by 1.7 percentage points. Additionally, it increased office visits immediately following the information shock and led to a reduction of 4.9 preventable, non-emergent, and primary-care-treatable emergency room visits per 1000 eligible children (8.2%). This decrease is present in shifts from emergency room visits to office visits across several common conditions. Our analysis suggest that children were more likely to receive care from the same clinic following lead tests and that establishing care reduced the likelihood parents would take their children to emergency rooms for conditions treatable in an office setting. Our results are potentially applicable to any situation in which individuals are induced to seek more care in an office visit setting.

A New York City condominium tower will be the world’s tallest predominantly residential building when it opens next year, though it will be competing with other ultra-luxury buildings for billionaire buyers, the building’s developer said Tuesday.

Dwayne Wade's home features a chef-caliber kitchen, multiple formal and informal living areas, a master suite, wine room, elevator, professional theater and — of course — a basketball court.

After Hurricane Dorian savaged the northern islands of the Bahamas, damaged properties loom as a target for real estate speculators.

Russ Weiner, the founder of Rockstar Energy Drink, has listed his Miami Beach and Delray Beach mansions for sale. The total asking price: $71.5 million.

The authors want to transform the home where they raised their children in Bangor, Maine, into the location for Stephen King’s personal archives. A guest house they own next door would host writers in residence.

Most of the Georgia mall heavily featured in the latest season of Netflix's "Stranger Things" is going up for sale.

The sprawling Baltimore County home once inhabited by Orioles stars Cal Ripken Jr. and Adam Jones is back on the market after less than six months.

Over the next 20 years more than a quarter of the nation’s currently owner-occupied homes will be on the market as owners pass on with Orlando being one of the top impacted areas.

A Los Angeles mansion built in the 1930s and seen in the credits for the TV show "The Beverly Hillbillies" has been sold for about $150 million, the highest home price ever in California.

Tom Brady is moving up and down the field as he and the New England Patriots make another postseason run. Away from the gridiron, however, the three-time league MVP is still looking to score big in the real estate market.

Jay Cutler and Kristin Cavalarri have chopped the price of their Tennnessee mansion to $4.95 million.

The home was painted in large patches of extremely bright primary colors with random splatters throughout. The home in the Il Regalo Circle Community in Naples resembles a pre-school play toy or cartoon home.

With the current trend toward de-cluttering and downsizing, there are plenty of books about how to winnow down possessions to the few that are truly necessary and loved. This book shows how you can live well once that's done.

A new National Association of Realtors report revealed the ways that legalizing marijuana has impacted real estate.

Billionaire Adam Neumann, who was ousted from WeWork after the company’s botched attempt to go public last year, is selling a swanky penthouse in Manhattan’s Gramercy Park neighborhood for $37.5 million. The 41-year-old Israeli entrepreneur, whose unorthodox management style made shocking headlines in recent months, reportedly combined a four-bedroom penthouse and a three-bedroom apartment that he bought in 2017 into a massive three-story unit.

Demand for first-time homeownership is surging as many late-blooming millennials are finally seeking to settle down. But in some ways, their timing couldn’t be worse. That’s because entry-level homes are in severely short supply, and prices are still ascending.

The outbreak of the coronavirus has dealt a shock to the global economy with unprecedented speed as it continues to spread across the world. Here is a look at some of the latest developments Wednesday related to the global economy, particular economic sectors, and the workplace.

U.S. sales of existing homes cratered 8.5% in March with real estate activity stalled by the coronavirus outbreak.

A look at how real estate in South Florida has been affected by the coronavirus pandemic, from virtual tours and technology playing larger in the home-buying process to how the market is expected to react.

Playa Del Puente narrowly missed out in the Hong Kong Derby last time, but jockey Blake Shinn is hoping he can gain compensation in Sunday's FWD QEII Cup at Sha Tin.

Monday's planned resumption of racing in Germany has been delayed, with the opening eight-race card at Dortmund postponed.

Racing in Germany will restart at Hanover on Thursday after being given clearance from the authorities.

Majestic Colt landed the first Listed prize of the German season as racing sparked back to life at Hanover on Thursday.

Victor Ludorum heads eight declarations for Monday's Prix de Fontainebleau at Longchamp.

Netherlands manager Ronald Koeman is feeling "fit as a fiddle" after undergoing a heart procedure in Amsterdam at the weekend, the former Everton and Southampton boss confirmed.

We develop a multi-risk SIR model (MR-SIR) where infection, hospitalization and fatality rates vary between groups—in particular between the “young”, “the middle-aged” and the “old”. Our MR-SIR model enables a tractable quantitative analysis of optimal policy similar to those already developed in the context of the homogeneous-agent SIR models. For baseline parameter values for the COVID-19 pandemic applied to the US, we find that optimal policies differentially targeting risk/age groups significantly outperform optimal uniform policies and most of the gains can be realized by having stricter lockdown policies on the oldest group. For example, for the same economic cost (24.3% decline in GDP), optimal semi–targeted or fully-targeted policies reduce mortality from 1.83% to 0.71% (thus, saving 2.7 million lives) relative to optimal uniform policies. Intuitively, a strict and long lockdown for the most vulnerable group both reduces infections and enables less strict lockdowns for the lower-risk groups. We also study the impacts of social distancing, the matching technology, the expected arrival time of a vaccine, and testing with or without tracing on optimal policies. Overall, targeted policies that are combined with measures that reduce interactions between groups and increase testing and isolation of the infected can minimize both economic losses and deaths in our model.

We show a causal impact of immigration on innovation and dynamism in US counties. To identify the causal impact of immigration, we use 130 years of detailed data on migrations from foreign countries to US counties to isolate quasi-random variation in the ancestry composition of US counties that results purely from the interaction of two historical forces: (i) changes over time in the relative attractiveness of different destinations within the US to the average migrant arriving at the time and (ii) the staggered timing of the arrival of migrants from different origin countries. We then use this plausibly exogenous variation in ancestry composition to predict the total number of migrants flowing into each US county in recent decades. We show four main results. First, immigration has a positive impact on innovation, measured by the patenting of local firms. Second, immigration has a positive impact on measures of local economic dynamism. Third, the positive impact of immigration on innovation percolates over space, but spatial spillovers quickly die out with distance. Fourth, the impact of immigration on innovation is stronger for more educated migrants.

We model optimal e-cigarette regulation and estimate key sufficient statistics. Using tax changes and scanner data, we estimate relatively elastic demand and limited substitution between e-cigarettes and combustible cigarettes. In sample surveys, historical smoking declines for high- and low-vaping demographics were unchanged after e-cigarettes were introduced; this demographic shift-share identification also suggests limited substitution. We field a new survey of experts, who report that vaping is almost as harmful as smoking cigarettes. In our model, these results imply that current e-cigarette taxes are far below the social optimum, but Monte Carlo simulations highlight substantial uncertainty.

The victim, believed to be in her 40s, was hit at the intersection of Atlantic Ave. and Pennsylvania Ave. in East New York about 4:30 a.m., cops said.

Creepy video of an intruder with a knife roaming through a sleeping man’s kitchen in Brooklyn was released by police Sunday night.

Cops are looking into the possibility a man who stalked through a Brooklyn home with a knife may have trespassed through another nearby location the night before.

The 33-year-old woman was shot in the chest and leg by the man in an apartment on Rockaway Pkwy. in Brownsville.

The Friday morning deaths capped off a deadly three days across the city.

The incident happened around 4:30 a.m. on the southbound platform for the B and Q trains inside the 7th Ave-Flatbush Ave. station in Park Slope.

A Brooklyn woman discovered a wayward rooster living on the streets in Park Slope, and took it home in hopes of finding out who he belonged to.

The suspects jumped one of the victims near Herkimer St. and Nostrand Ave. in Bedford-Stuyvesant about 3 a.m. Dec. 21.

Sometime after 911 was called, the 63-year-old victim — whose name has not been released — went into his bedroom to put out the fire. He soon passed out amid the smoke and flames, officials said. Responding firefighters and EMTs pulled him out of the apartment. "He was badly burned," said a neighbor.

A Brooklyn woman was slashed in the face with a knife by an enraged passenger after her child threw up on a city bus.

Rubin, now a genteel 72-year-old Staten Island resident, alleges in a newly-filed Child Victims Act lawsuit that he was sexually abused on a weekly basis between 1960-65 by a cabal of five predatory teachers at the prestigious school.