In this paper, we attempt to explain differences between the US and UK household wealth distributions, with an emphasis on the quite different porfolios held in stock and housing equities in the two countries. As a proportion of their total wealth, British households hold relatively small...

In this paper, we modeled several types of housing transitions of the elderly in two countries -- Britain and the United States. One important form of these transitions involves downsizing of housing consumption, the importance of which among older households is still debated. This downsizing...

This paper investigates the effects of spatial housing price risk on housing choices over the first half of the life-cycle. Housing price risk can be substantial but, unlike other risky assets which people can avoid, most people want to eventually own their home thereby creating an insurance...

This working paper presents Chapter 7 of a book to be published for the National Bureau of Economic Research by the University of Chicago Press. The point of the book is to compare taxes on income from capital in four countries,accounting for corporate, personal, and property taxes, and...

This working paper presents Chapter 2 of a book that has been submitted to the University of Chicago Press for publication consideration. The point of the book is to compare taxes on income from capital infour countries,accounting for corporate, personal, and property taxes, and including...

Forecasts of the rate of price inflation play a central role in the formulation of monetary policy, and forecasting inflation is a key job for economists at the Federal Reserve Board. This paper examines whether this job has become harder and, to the extent that it has, what changes in the...

In this paper we document significantly steeper declines in nondurable expenditures in the UK compared to the US, in spite of income paths being similar. We explore several possible causes, including different employment paths, housing ownership and expenses, levels and paths of health status,...