This paper examines mortgage outcomes for a large, representative sample of individual home purchases and refinances linked to credit scores in seven major US markets in the recent housing boom and bust. Among those with similar credit scores and loan attributes, black and Hispanic homeowners...

This paper uses the Auerbach-Kotlikoff Dynamic Simulation Model to compare the projected demographic transitions in Canada and the United States. The simulation model determines the perfect foresight transition path of an economy in which individuals live to age 75. The model's preferences are...

This paper derives analytical measures of the combined effects of tax changes and adjustment costs on investment and market value. Unlike earlier measures, the effective tax rate derived is valid in the presence of adjustment costs and anticipated tax changes. The derived measure of the impact...

This paper focuses on U.S. saving, demographics, and fiscal policy. We use data from the Consumer Expenditure Surveys of the 1980s to consider the effect of demographic change on past and future U.S. saving rates. Our findings indicate that demographic change may significantly alter the U.S....

This paper uses a new large-scale dynamic simulation model to compare the equity, efficiency, and macroeconomic effects of five alternative to the current U.S. federal income tax. These reforms are a proportional income tax, a proportional consumption tax, a flat tax, a flat tax with transition...

In recent years, the renewed strength of immigration to the United States has sparked a debate about the economic effects of immigration. A central issue in this debate has been the fiscal impact of immigrants. Most research in this area has adopted a static, cross-section approach in assessing...

This paper considers the magnitude of the U.S. fiscal imbalance, as measured by the permanent changes needed to stabilize the national debt as a share of GDP. At present, even after recent improvements in forecast deficits, this imbalance stands at 5.3 percent of GDP -- several times the...

We provide novel estimates of the timing, magnitudes, and potential determinants of the start of the last housing boom across American neighborhoods and metropolitan areas (MSAs) using a rich new micro data set containing 23 million housing transactions in 94 metropolitan areas between 1993 and...

The Tax Reform Act of 1986 was expected to cause an overall decline in business fixed investment and a shift in the composition of investment away from machinery and equipment, which previously had received an investment tax credit. Yet neither investment relative to GNP nor equipment investment...

This study combines the 2013 Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances data and the Fiscal Analyzer, a highly detailed life-cycle consumption-smoothing program, to a) measure ultimate economic inequality – inequality in lifetime spending power – within cohorts, b) assess fiscal...