Search Results
Showing results 1 to 10 of approximately 30.
(refine search)
Journal Article
Do Firms Switch Their Legal Form of Organization When Taxes Change?
Tax-law changes can cause firms to change their organizational structure.
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
Household Debt and the Great Recession
In the mid-2000s, household private debt reached a new level 1.2 times larger than personal income? before collapsing during the Great Recession. This paper uses microeconomic data to document the main changes in personal debt and explore the behavior of debt across generations over two periods: before and after the Great Recession. Special emphasis is placed on participation rates by category of debt (the extensive margin), volume borrowed (the intensive margin), and default behavior. Key findings include that between 1999 and 2013 the fraction of individuals with only unsecured (e.g., ...
Working Paper
The Postwar Conquest of the Home Ownership Dream
Post-World War II witnessed the largest housing boom in recent history. This paper develops a quantitative equilibrium model of tenure choice to analyze the key determinants in the co-movement between home-ownership and house prices over the period 1940-1960. The parameterized model matches key features and is capable of accounting for the observed housing boom. The key driver in understanding this boom is an asymmetric productivity change that favors the goods sector relative to the construction sector. Other factors such as demographics, income risk, and government policy are important ...
Discussion Paper
Liquidity and real activity in a simple open economy model
We examine nominal and real exchange rates, interest rates, prices, and evolutions of real variables in a two-country, monetary general-equilibrium model that includes a financial sector and shocks to technologies and money growth rates. Qualitative properties of the model are provided and moment predictions from a calibrated version of the model are compared to moments of time series drawn from actual economies. We focus on international monetary shock transmissions, and effects of monetary innovations on nominal and real exchange rates and nominal interest rates.
Working Paper
Mortgage contracts and housing tenure decisions
In this paper, we analyze various mortgage contracts and their implications for housing tenure and investment decisions using a model with heterogeneous consumers and liquidity constraints. We find that different types of mortgage contracts influence these decisions through three dimensions: the downpayment constraint, the payment schedule, and the amortization schedule. Contracts with lower downpayment requirements allow younger and lower income households to enter the housing market earlier. Mortgage contracts with increasing payment schedules increase the participation of first-time ...
Working Paper
Exchange rates and international relative prices and quantities in equilibrium models with alternative preference specifications
Dynamic open economy models with time-separable, deterministic utilities fail to account for observed dynamics of exchange rates and international relative prices and quantities. This paper examines the ability of extensions of existing open economy models to account for exchange rates, international relative prices, and international trade quantities. The extensions involve preferences with taste shocks and nontime-separable utilities in habit persistence form. Quantitative properties of calibrated versions of the models are examined in light of time series properties of key international ...
Discussion Paper
A monetary, open-economy model with capital mobility
This paper examines a two-country, monetary general-equilibrium model that includes a financial sector, capital mobility, and shocks to technologies and money-growth rates. Capital mobility allows agents in both countries to participate in rewards from relatively favorable shocks realized in either country. Currency exchange facilitates currency-intermediated international trade of consumption and capital goods. Qualitative and quantitative implications of the model for evolutions of variables are investigated. The quantitative analysis is performed by numerically solving and simulating the ...
Working Paper
Accounting for changes in the homeownership rate
After three decades of being relatively constant, the homeownership rate increased over the 1994?2005 period to attain record highs. The objective of this paper is to account for the observed boom in ownership by examining the role played by changes in demographic factors and innovations in the mortgage market that lessened down payment 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 ...
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 ...