Danat exposure is orthogonal to observable city characteristics except population.

Evidence

Table 2 examines the balancedness of city-level covariates. It presents the results of multivariate regressions with danat, branch, or exposure as the dependent variable. Across specifications, only population is consistently significant, which is why we control for log population throughout. Danat-exposure is not systematically correlated with the share of blue-collar workers or with the percentage of Jews. There were also no statistically significant differences in the share of Protestants, pre-crisis log income per capita, or the unemployment rate. In the Internet Appendix we also follow Pei et al. (2019) to detect potential selection in observables by using the pre-crisis control variables as left-hand side variables in balancing regressions. We further report normalized differences, following Imbens and Wooldridge (2009). None of the balancing regressions yield a systematic correlation between Danat-exposure and any of the control variables. These results make it unlikely that our findings are explained by selection on observables. — Sebastian Doerr et al., Financial Crises and Political…, 90

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Danat exposure is measured as above-average exposure or presence of a branch — Sebastian Doerr et al., Financial Crises and Political…, 261; Danat-exposed cities did not differ systematically on observable characteristics.; Danat-exposed cities had no pre-crisis unemployment divergence from other cities — Sebastian Doerr et al., Financial Crises and Political…, 144

Broader Connections

• Danat-exposed cities did not differ systematically on observable characteristics. #corroborates (0.95)
• Danat-exposed cities had no pre-crisis unemployment divergence from other cities #exemplifies (0.90) — Sebastian Doerr et al., Financial Crises and Political…, 144