We assess the conceptual and empirical features of a number of house price series for the United States. We then calculate a measure of the net up-grading of the existing stock of houses that took place during the 1950-1989 period and adjust price indexes for this net increase in quality....

We investigated whether in recent years banks have increased their holdings of securities at the expense of their holdings of business loans in response to shortfalls of their capital relative to risk-weighted capital standards and relative to a capital standard that made no explicit allowance...