Financial Intermediation, House Prices and the Welfare Effects of the U.S. Great Recession

This paper quantifies the welfare effects of the aggregate house price collapse during the U.S. Great Recession for leveraged and un-leveraged U.S. households. We calibrate a dynamic general equilibrium model to the U.S. economy and simulate the 2007-2009 Great Recession as a contemporaneous shock to interest rate spread and aggregate income that quantitatively account for the observed collapse in house prices. As a consequence of the loss in housing wealth, our estimates show that borrowers lost significantly more than savers in terms of welfare. The worsened conditions in the financial intermediation sector in the Great Recession forced borrowers to de-leverage, and generated a pure redistribution from savers to borrowers. This amplified the welfare losses of borrowers while caused a relative welfare gain for savers.