Overconfidence is a widely documented phenomenon. Empirical evidence reveal two types of overconfidence in financial markets: investors both overestimate the average rate of return to their assets and underestimate uncertainty associated with the return. This paper explores implications of...

We propose and estimate a model of family job search and wealth accumulation with data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). This dataset reveals a very asymmetric labor market for household members who share that their job finding is stimulated by their partners' job...

This paper measures the effect of the ongoing extensions of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits on the unemployment rate using a calibrated structural model that features job search and consumption-saving decisions, skill depreciation, UI eligibility, and UI benefit extensions that capture what...

The authors estimate a structural model of optimal life-cycle housing and consumption in the presence of realistic labor income and house price uncertainties. The model postulates constant elasticity of substitution between housing service and nonhousing consumption, and explicitly incorporates...

Supersedes Working Paper 09-7. We estimate a structural model of optimal life-cycle housing and nonhousing consumption in the presence of labor income and house price uncertainties. The model postulates constant elasticity of substitution between housing service and nonhousing consumption and...

We present a model of long-duration collateralized debt with risk of default. Applied to the housing market, it can match the homeownership rate, the average foreclosure rate, and the lower tail of the distribution of home-equity ratios across homeowners prior to the recent crisis. We stress the...

The authors construct a quantitative equilibrium model of the housing sector that accounts for the homeownership rate, the average foreclosure rate, and the distribution of home-equity ratios across homeowners prior to the recent boom and bust in the housing market. They analyze the key...

The equity premium puzzle holds that the coefficient of relative risk aversion estimated from the consumption based CAPM under power utility is excessively high. Moreover, estimates in the literature vary considerably across countries. We gauge the uncertainty pertaining to the country risk...

Is it possible to forecast using poorly measured data? According to the permanent income hypothesis, a low personal saving rate should predict rising future income (Campbell, 1987). However, the U.S. personal saving rate is initially poorly measured and has been repeatedly revised upward in...

We estimate a structural model of optimal life-cycle housing and nonhousing consumption in the presence of labor income and house price uncertainties. The model postulates constant elasticity of substitution between housing service and nonhousing consumption and explicitly incorporates a housing...