We use detailed micro data to document a causal response of local retail prices to changes in local house prices, with elasticities of 15%-20% across housing booms and busts. Notably, these price responses are largest in zip codes with many homeowners, and non-existent in zip codes with mostly...

We document that variations in government purchases generate a rise in consumption, the real and the product wage, and a fall in the markup. This evidence is robust across alternative empirical methodologies used to identify innovations in government spending (structural VAR vs. narrative...

This paper provides an explanation for situations in which the state variables describing the economy do not change, but aggregate consumption experiences significant changes. We present a theory of pseudo-wealth—individuals' perceived wealth that is derived from heterogeneous beliefs and...

Both textbook economics and common sense teach us that the value of household wealth should be related to consumer spending. At the same time, movements in asset values often seem disassociated with important movements in consumer spending, as episodes such as the 1987 stock market crash and the...

We provide new time-varying estimates of the housing wealth effect back to the 1980s. These estimates are based on a new identification strategy that exploits systematic differences in city-level exposure to regional house price cycles as an instrument for house prices. Our estimates of housing...

We examine the link between increases in housing wealth, financial wealth, and consumer spending. We rely upon a panel of 14 countries observed annually for various periods during the past 25 years and a panel of U.S. states observed quarterly during the 1980s and 1990s. We impute the aggregate...

This paper provides large-sample evidence that poison pill rights issues, control share statutes, and business combination statutes do not deter takeovers and are unlikely to have caused the demise of the 1980s market for corporate control, even though 87% of all exchange-listed firms are now...

The U.S. economy is characterized by large, longer term regime shifts in asset values relative to macroeconomic fundamentals. These movements coincide with shifts in the real federal funds rate in excess of a measure of the natural rate of interest, and in equity market return premia. We specify...

This paper reviews the behavior of financial asset prices in relation to consumption. The paper lists some important stylized facts that characterize US data, and relates them to recent developments in equilibrium asset pricing theory. Data from other countries are examined to see which features...

International risk-sharing has far-reaching implications both for economic policy and for basic research in economics. When countries do not share risk, individuals in those countries experience fluctuations in their consumption levels that are undesirable and possibly unnecessary. This paper...