Aggressive deregulation of the mortgage market in the early 1980s triggered innovations that greatly reduced indebted households' required home equity, and a borrowing surge followed. This paper uses a calibrated general equilibrium model of lending from the wealthy to the middle class to...

This paper characterizes the labor supply and borrowing of a household facing collateral requirements that limit its debt and compel it to accumulate equity in its durable goods stock. The household's discount rate exceeds the market rate of interest, so it would otherwise finance increased...

The effects of equipment investment on relative wages and employment of skilled labor are estimated. The basic hypothesis is that such effects are positive, due to the presence of either equipment-skill complementarity or skill advantage in technology adoption. Using a panel data set for a wide...