Response to Célérier and Tak (April 2021)

Stein and Yannelis (2020) (SY) study the short-term impact of the Freedman’s Savings Bank on human capital, labor market, and wealth outcomes. This short note is a response to Célérier and Tak (2021) (CT), which offers comments on SY, claiming to “empirically reject the assumptions of the study’s identification strategy” and arguing that “financial inclusion can be detrimental to minorities.” We show their claims are driven by a serious data error and by omitting data, and that their empirical tests do not evaluate the identification assumption in SY. After using an alternative matching strategy which throws out four-fifths of matches, CT present estimates with very large standard errors. We show that these estimates cannot statistically reject large effects, including many of the point estimates in SY.