The 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act limited homestead exemptions and imposed means test to discourage petitioners seeking financial benefits. We find that these restrictions were effective in steering petitioners away from Chapter 7 filings and into Chapter 13.

This paper derives closed-form and numerical solutions for relative risk aversion in a standard consumption-based model enriched with housing. The presence of housing enables the household to hedge against unexpected shocks and may decrease relative risk aversion. In addition, housing may...

This article examines the effects of a tax on vacant dwellings. I use a search equilibrium model in which the distribution of rent is the result of the owners’ posting strategy. I show that this tax reduces the number of vacant dwellings and increases the average rent.

Movements in house prices and consumer spending are closely correlated in many developed nations. Much debate exists on whether this relationship is causal arising from either wealth effects or via borrowing constraints. This paper uses a unique survey question on consumer responses to house...

This paper proposes a new dividend-based S&P 500 Index return predictor, the implied dividend yield term structure (IDYTS). We show that the IDYTS is a “cleaner” predictor than its conventional counterpart, the dividend price ratio (DP), in that the expected return is a linear combination...

We study optimal dynamic compliance decisions in an uncertain environment. Contrary to the static literature, greater uncertainty affects consumption, not the optimal tax evasion rule. Thus, audit and sanctions rather than fiscal uncertainty should be used to control tax evasion.

Empirical evidence suggests that asset returns correlate more strongly in bear markets than conventional correlation estimates imply. We propose a method for determining complete tail-correlation matrices based on Value-at-Risk (VaR) estimates. We demonstrate how to obtain more efficient...

Since the enactment of Pension Protection Act of 2006, lifecycle funds that reduce exposure to stocks with age have rapidly replaced money market funds as the most commonly nominated default investment options for participant-directed retirement plans. We examine their appropriateness in meeting...

We identify the conditions where robust mean–variance preferences, which capture ambiguity aversion, are observationally nonequivalent to subjective mean–variance preferences. Conversely, we also provide an example showing that observational equivalence holds regardless of the degree of...

Using a stylized two-period model we compare portfolio solutions from two local solution approaches–the approach of Judd and Guu (2001) and the approach of Devereux and Sutherland (2010, 2011)–with the true nonlinear portfolio solution.