In this paper, I examine the implications of collateral constraints in a production economy and demonstrate that collateral constraints may have a role to play in resolving two outstanding puzzles: the risk-free rate puzzle and the total factor productivity puzzle. The first puzzle, as noted by...

This paper compares wealth portfolios across countries. The household sector in the US and Canada owns much more financial wealth, and much less housing wealth, than the household sector in most of Europe. We address this fact using a calibrated two sector growth model with endogenous financial...

I propose a new valuation ratio: durables price over the rental cost of capital, which is a direct analogue of the price-dividend ratio. I show that it is a rational forecast of future discount rates and future growth rates of the rental cost. In order to impute the unobservable rental cost, I...

This paper investigate how the degree of credit market development is related to business cycle fluctuations in industrialized countries. I show that a business cycle model with collateral constraints generate a negative relation between the volatility of the cyclical component of output and the...

Post-retirement, the model in the main text (published in the Review of Economic Dynamics) reduces to the Merton (1969) problem, which has of course an exact solution. Pre-retirement, however, the agent holds an American option, namely, retire now or keep working. Problems involving American...

We examine the effects of collateralized borrowing in a realistically parameterized life-cycle portfolio choice problem. We provide basic intuition in a two-period model and then solve a multi-period model computationally. Our analysis provides insights into life-cycle portfolio choice relevant...

This paper deals with the macroeconomic effects of government guarantees on debt issued by Government-Sponsored Enterprises. We set up an economy with a housing and mortgage market where the government provides banks with insurance against aggregate shocks to mortgage default risk. We then study...