A fall in house prices due to a change in fundamental value redistributes wealth from those long housing (for whom the fundamental value of the house they own exceeds the present discounted value of their planned future consumption of housing services) to those short housing. In a representative...

This paper develops a new analysis of the U. S. economy in the 1920s that is illuminated by contrasts with the 1990s, and it also re-examines the causes of the Great Depression. In both the 1920s and the 1990s the acceleration of productivity growth linked to the delayed effects of previously...

In the U.S. economy over the past twenty five years, house prices exhibit fluctuations considerably larger than house rents and these large fluctuations tend to move together with business cycles. We build a simple theoretical model to characterize these observations by showing the tight...

We study the cyclical implications of credit market imperfections in a calibrated dynamic, stochastic general equilibrium model wherein firms face persistent shocks to aggregate and individual productivity. In our model economy, optimal capital reallocation is distorted by two frictions:...

We use a fully-specified neoclassical model augmented with costly external equity as a laboratory to study the relations between stock returns and equity financing decisions. Simulations show that the model can simultaneously and in many cases quantitatively reproduce: procyclical equity issuance;...

We present a DSGE model where firms optimally choose among alternative instruments of external finance. The model is used to explain the evolving composition of corporate debt during the financial crisis of 2008-09, namely the observed shift from bank finance to bond finance, at a time when the...