Search Results
Journal Article
The Homeownership Experience of Minorities During the Great Recession
It has been argued that during the Great Recession, wealth losses were more concentrated for college-educated Black and Hispanic families than for White and Asian college-educated families and their non-college-educated Black and Hispanic peers. This article explores the extent to which the homeownership experience for families who purchased homes between 2004 and 2008 is a potentially important factor in explaining this finding. During the housing boom, the increase in homeownership for Blacks and Hispanics was very similar, but the second group had a smaller decline. Despite these ...
Report
Identifying "Tipping Points" in Consumer Liabilities Using High-Frequency Data
The concept of a "tipping point" captures the idea of a threshold where debt is no longer sustainable and becomes a drag on household financial well-being. In the most severe cases, a "tipping point" represents the point at which a household experiences a debt default. This paper constructs different measures based on the dynamics of the monthly debt payment to after-tax income ratio. The preliminary examination using data from the Credit Risk Insight Servicing McDash (CRISM) dataset suggests that some of these measures have some predictive content when compared to alternative risk measures ...
Working Paper
Corporate income tax, legal form of organization, and employment
We adopt a dynamic stochastic occupational choice model with heterogeneous agents and evaluate the impact of a potential reduction in the corporate income tax on employment. We show that a reduction in corporate income tax leads to moderate job creation. In the extreme case, the elimination of the corporate income tax would reduce the non-employed population by 5.4 percent. In the model, a reduction in the corporate income tax creates jobs through two channels, one from new entry firms and one from existing firms changing their form of legal organization. In particular, the latter accounts ...
Working Paper
The tax treatment of homeowners and landlords and the progressivity of income taxation
This paper analyzes the connection between the asymmetric tax treatment of homeowners and landlords and the progressivity of income taxation using a quantitative overlapping generations general equilibrium model with housing and rental markets. Our model emphasizes the determinants of tenure choice (owning versus renting) and the household decision to supply housing services to the rental market. This formulation breaks the link between the rental price and the equilibrium interest rate. Hence, the aggregate supply of rental property responds differently to the direction of rental price ...
Journal Article
Gauging Debt Levels in the U.S. and Eighth District
In this article, we look more closely at the recent developments in household debt accumulation nationally and in the Eighth District. One of the key findings is that household debt is increasing, but it has not yet reached the level observed in 2008 if adjustments are made for inflation. Also, the cause of the debt run-up in 2008 was mortgage debt. By contrast, consumer credit card debt and auto debt are the key drivers in the more recent increase.
Journal Article
Mortgage Debt Continues to Decline While Auto Lending Soars
Auto and student loans remained the fastest growing consumer debt categories in the second quarter, a Center for Household Financial Stability report states.
Journal Article
On Corporate Income Taxes, Employment, and Wages
The passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 has resulted in debate on whether the decline in personal and corporate income tax rates will increase employment, income, and wages.
Working Paper
The loan structure and housing tenure decisions in an equilibrium model of mortgage choice
The objective of this paper is to understand how loan structure affects (i) the borrower?s selection of a mortgage contract and (ii) the aggregate economy. We develop a quantitative equilibrium theory of mortgage choice where households can choose from a menu of long-term (nominal) mortgage loans. The model accounts for observed patterns in housing consumption, ownership, and portfolio allocations. We find that the loan structure is a quantitatively significant factor in a household?s housing finance decision. The model suggests that the mortgage structure preferred by a household is ...
Working Paper
Accounting for changes in the homeownership rate
After three decades of being relatively constant, the homeownership rate increased over the period 1994 to 2005 to attain record highs. The objective of this paper is to account for the observed boom in ownership by examining the role played changes in demographic factors and innovations in the mortgage market which lessened downpayment requirements. To measure the aggregate and distributional impact of these factors, we construct a quantitative general equilibrium overlapping generation model with housing. We find that the long-run importance of the introduction of new mortgage products for ...