The relative popularity of adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) and fixed-rate mort- gages (FRMs) varies considerably both across countries and over time. We ask how movements in current and expected future interest rates affect the share of ARMs in total mortgage issuance. Using a nine-country...

Over the U.S. business cycle, fluctuations in residential investment are well known to systematically lead GDP. These dynamics are documented here to be specific to the U.S. and Canada. In other developed economies residential investment is broadly coincident with GDP. Nonresidential investment...

This study focuses on financing for long-term care (LTC). LTC involves a range of services including medical and nursing care, personal care services, assistance services and social services that help people live independently or in residential settings when they can no longer carry out routine...

Reconciling work and family life involves two key goals for both individuals and society: being able to work, to earn an income while participating in the most important social activity of modern life, and providing the best care and nurturing for one’s own children. This first OECD review of...

Mind the Gap is an unprecedented attempt to quantify the size of one of the most pervasive barriers to energy efficiency – principal-agent problems, or in common parlance, variations on the ‘landlord-tenant’ problem. In doing so, the book provides energy analysts and economists with unique...

Across the OECD, farmers are voluntarily forming community-based associations to help achieve a more sustainable agriculture. What are the reasons behind this phenomenon? How can it be encouraged? To what extent can such group-based voluntary action substitute for, or complement, existing...

With the American Time Use Survey of 2003 and 2004 we first examine whether additional market work has neutral impacts on the mix of non-market activities. The estimates indicate that fixed time costs of market work alter patterns of non-market activities, reducing leisure time and mostly...