Search Results
Working Paper
Why did so many people make so many ex post bad decisions? the causes of the foreclosure crisis
We present 12 facts about the mortgage crisis. We argue that the facts refute the popular story that the crisis resulted from finance industry insiders deceiving uninformed mortgage borrowers and investors. Instead, we argue that borrowers and investors made decisions that were rational and logical given their ex post overly optimistic beliefs about house prices. We then show that neither institutional features of the mortgage market nor financial innovations are any more likely to explain those distorted beliefs than they are to explain the Dutch tulip bubble 400 years ago. Economists should ...
Working Paper
Reducing foreclosures: no easy answers
This paper takes a skeptical look at a leading argument about what is causing the foreclosure crisis and what should be done to stop it. We use an economic model to focus on two key decisions: the borrower's choice to default on a mortgage and the lender's subsequent choice whether to renegotiate or modify the loan. The theoretical model and econometric analysis illustrate that unaffordable loans, defined as those with high mortgage payments relative to income at origination, are unlikely to be the main reason that borrowers decide to default. In addition, this paper provides theoretical ...
Report
Subprime outcomes: turmoil in the mortgage market
Until 2007, few Americans had probably heard the word ?subprime? - including many homeowners who would come to learn that their own mortgage was a subprime mortgage. Today, subprime mortgages are much discussed because they lie at the center of the turmoil that roiled credit markets in 2007 and 2008.
Conference Paper
U. S. labor supply in the twenty-first century
The American labor force will be transformed as the twenty-first century unfolds, a change that will confront policymakers and business firms with new challenges and new opportunities. The impending slowdown of labor force growth that will accompany the retirement of the baby boom generation already is playing a central role in national debates over the future solvency of Social Security and Medicare, as well as U.S. immigration policies. But labor supply changes will be influenced by other dimensions as well. In the coming decades, American workers are likely to be, on average, older and ...
Conference Paper
Labor supply in the new century
To explore the labor-supply trends that will affect economic policymaking in the twenty-first century, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston chose "Labor Supply in the New Century? as the theme for its 52nd Annual Economic Conference held in June 2007. The conference?s six papers and its keynote address by Eugene Steuerle provide a broad overview of the quantity and quality implications of labor-supply trends.
Report
Did abnormal weather affect U.S. employment growth in early 2015?
A current policy concern centers on how the severe winter weather experienced in some parts of the country may have affected the economy earlier this year. As of 2015:Q1, monthly payroll growth has slowed by more than 100,000 jobs compared to 2014:Q4, while GDP declined at an annual rate of 0.7 percent. To measure the potential effect of weather on recent employment growth, the author estimates a regression model using state-level employment and weather data from 1981 onward. The coefficients from this model are combined with data on recent weather to generate an estimate of how weather is ...
Report
Measuring the US Employment Situation Using Online Panels: The Yale Labor Survey
This report presents the results of a rapid, low-cost survey that collects labor market data for individuals in the United States. The Yale Labor Survey (YLS) used an online panel from YouGov to replicate statistics from the Current Population Survey (CPS), the government’s source of household labor market statistics. The YLS’s advantages include its timeliness, low cost, and ability to develop new questions quickly to study labor market patterns during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Although YLS estimates of unemployment and participation rates mirrored the broad trends in CPS ...
Report
Population Aging and the US Labor Force Participation Rate
The labor force participation rate dropped sharply at the beginning of the pandemic, and as of November 2021 it had recovered only about half of its lost ground. The failure of the participation rate to get closer to its level immediately before the pandemic has puzzled many analysts. In this note, we show that the current participation rate is much less puzzling if one compares it with participation in November 2017 (the last time the unemployment rate was at its current level of 4.2 percent), rather than February 2020 (immediately before the pandemic). Since November 2017, population aging ...
Monograph
U. S. labor supply in the twenty-first century
The American labor force will be transformed as the twenty-first century unfolds, a change that will confront policymakers and business firms with new challenges and new opportunities. The impending slowdown of labor force growth that will accompany the retirement of the baby boom generation already is playing a central role in national debates over the future solvency of Social Security and Medicare, as well as U.S. immigration policies. But labor supply changes will be influenced by other dimensions as well. In the coming decades, American workers are likely to be, on average, older and ...
Monograph
Labor supply in the new century
To explore the labor-supply trends that will affect economic policymaking in the twenty-first century, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston chose "Labor Supply in the New Century? as the theme for its 52nd Annual Economic Conference held in June 2007. The conference?s six papers and its keynote address by Eugene Steuerle provide a broad overview of the quantity and quality implications of labor-supply trends.