We show that easier access to credit significantly increases house prices by using exogenous changes in the conforming loan limit as an instrument for lower cost of financing. Houses that become eligible for financing with a conforming loan show an increase in house value of 1.16 dollars per...

Many important markets, such as the housing market, involve goods that are both indivisible and of budgetary significance. We introduce new graph theoretic techniques ideally suited to analyzing such markets. In this paper and its companion (Caplin and Leahy [2010]), we use these techniques to...

We develop a theoretical framework in which political and economic cycles are jointly determined. These cycles are driven by three political economy frictions: policymakers are non-benevolent, they cannot commit to policies, and they have private information about the tightness of the government...

This paper proposes forward convergence as a model refinement scheme for linear rational expectations (LRE) models and an associated no-bubble condition as a solution selection criterion. We relate these two concepts to determinacy and characterize the complete set of economically relevant...

Eleven percent of the Malawian population is HIV infected. Eighteen percent of sexual encounters are casual. A condom is used one quarter of the time. A choice-theoretic general equilibrium search model is constructed to analyze the Malawian epidemic. In the developed framework, people select...

We analyze a new class of equilibria that emerges when a central bank conducts monetary policy by setting an interest rate (as an arbitrary function of its available information) and letting the private sector set the quantity traded. These equilibria involve a run on the central bank's interest...

We develop an empirical search-matching model which is suitable for analyzing the wage, employment and welfare impact of regulation in a labor market with heterogeneous workers and jobs. To achieve this we develop an equilibrium model of wage determination and employment which extends the...

We present and empirically implement an equilibrium labor market search model where risk averse workers facing medical expenditure shocks are matched with firms making health insurance coverage decisions. Our model delivers a rich set of predictions that can account for a wide variety of...

We use a new micro data set that covers all oil fields in the world to estimate a stochastic industry-equilibrium model of the oil industry with two alternative market structures. In the first, all firms are competitive. In the second, OPEC firms act as a cartel. This effort is a first step...