Households who wish to extract home equity through refinancing their mortgage face a hidden transaction cost. The real value of the fixed nominal mortgage payment declines over time with inflation. The change in the real value of the mortgage payments from taking on a new mortgage is positive...

Previous research suggests that, in partial equilibrium, individuals whose decision-making exhibits a present-bias-such as hyperbolic discounters who tend to over-consume will be in favor of having a floor imposed on their savings. In this paper, I show it is quite difficult for the introduction...

This paper analyzes Milton Friedman's (1968) article "The Role of Monetary Policy," via a discussion of seven fallacies concerning the article. These fallacies are: (1) "The Role of Monetary Policy" was Friedman’s first public statement of the natural rate hypothesis. (2) The...

Rate curves for overnight loans between bank pairs, as functions of loan values, can be used to infer valuation of reserves by banks. The inferred valuation can be used to interpret shifts in rate curves between bank pairs, for example, in response to a financial crisis. This paper proposes a...

We study a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model in which agents are concerned about model uncertainty regarding climate change. An externality from greenhouse gas emissions damages the economy's capital stock. We assume that the mapping from climate change to damages is subject to...

This paper provides a closed-form solution for the price-dividend ratio in a standard asset pricing model with stochastic volatility. The solution is useful in allowing comparisons among numerical methods used to approximate the non-trivial closed-form

We construct a new "list-price index" that accurately reveals trends in house prices several months before existing sales price indices like Case-Shiller. Our index is based on the repeat-sales approach but for recent months uses listings data, which are available essentially in real time,...

Why do more educated workers experience lower unemployment rates and lower employment volatility? A closer look at the data reveals that these workers have similar job finding rates, but much lower and less volatile separation rates than their less educated peers. We argue that on-the-job...

This paper argues that the decline in U.S. real GDP growth volatility after the mid 1980s was an outcome of more risk efficient and more diversified sectoral allocations. Using a portfolio approach, I distinguish between the two determinants of GDP growth volatility: sectoral covariances and...

This paper shows that a firm's reliance on skilled labor is an underlying determinant of its exposure to aggregate volatility risk. I present a model in which firms make hiring and firing decisions in an environment of time-varying aggregate volatility, and face linear adjustment costs that...