Using a novel source of quasi-experimental variation in interest rates, we study the response of household debt and intertemporal consumption allocation to interest rates. We also develop a new approach to structurally estimate the Elasticity of Intertemporal Substitution (EIS). In the United...

This paper analyses the conduct of monetary policy in an environment where households' desire to amass precautionary savings is influenced by fluctuations in the volatilities of disturbances that hit the economy. It uses a simple New Keynesian model with external habit formation that is...

We investigate the effect of house prices on household borrowing using administrative mortgage data from the United Kingdom and a new empirical approach. The data contain household-level information on house prices and borrowing in a panel of homeowners, who refinance at regular and...

What explains the strong comovement between house prices and job losses over the UK business cycle? To study this question, I build a general equilibrium model with collateral constraints, endogenous job separation and housing shocks, and confront it with macroeconomic data via Bayesian methods....

In response to an interest rate change, mortgagors in the United Kingdom and United States adjust their spending significantly (especially on durable goods) but outright home-owners do not. While the dollar change in mortgage payments is nearly three times larger in the United Kingdom than in...

'Consumption risk sharing' refers to the ability of agents to insure or protect their consumption against shocks to their income, for example, by borrowing and lending or holding claims on foreign equity. So measuring the extent of risk sharing informs us about how consumption is likely to...

When the economy is in a liquidity trap and households have a precautionary motive to save against unemployment risk, adverse demand shocks cause severe deflationary spirals and output contractions. In this context, we study the implications of optimal monetary policy, which consists of keeping...

We extend the standard textbook search and matching model by introducing deep habits in consumption. The cyclical fluctuations of vacancies and unemployment in our model can replicate those observed in the US data, with labour market tightness being 20 times more volatile than consumption....

A set of newly added questions in the 2011 to 2014 Bank of England/NMG Consulting Survey reveals that British households are estimated to change their consumption by significantly more in reaction to temporary and unanticipated falls in income than to rises of the same size. Household balance...

This paper quantifies the local impact of monetary policy through the cash-flow channel during the Crisis by combining novel micro datasets with near-universal coverage of UK mortgages and employment. I estimate that a reduction in mortgage payments equivalent to 1% of household income led to...