We characterize the optimal linear tax on capital in an Overlapping Generations model with two period lived households facing uninsurable idiosyncratic labor income risk. The Ramsey government internalizes the general equilibrium feedback of private precautionary saving. For logarithmic utility...

We characterize the optimal linear tax on capital in an Overlapping Generations model with two period lived households facing uninsurable idiosyncratic labor income risk. The Ramsey government internalizes the general equilibrium effects of private precautionary saving on factor prices. For...

We consider a class of additively time-separable life-cycle consumption-savings models with iso-elastic per period power utility featuring resistance to inter-temporal substitution of θ with linear consumption policy functions. The utility maximization problem is dynamically inconsistent for...

Homeownership rates differ widely across European countries. We document that part of this variation is driven by differences in the fraction of adults co-residing with their parents. Comparing Germany and Italy, we show that in contrast to homeownership rates per household, homeownership rates...

In some countries, a sizable fraction of savings is derived from corporate savings. Although larger, traded corporations are often co-owned by foreign portfolio investors, current international accounting standards allocate all corporate savings to the host country. This paper suggests a...

We study the redistributive effects of inflation combining administrative bank data with an information provision experiment during an episode of historic inflation. On average, households are well-informed about prevailing inflation and are concerned about its impact on their wealth; yet, while...

How does the design of debt repayment schedules affect household borrowing? To answer this question, we exploit a Swedish policy reform that eliminated interest-only mortgages for loan-to-value ratios above 50%. We document substantial bunching at the threshold, leading to 5% lower borrowing....

Expectations are central for housing decisions and heterogeneity in expectations is a robust feature of survey data. We study the implications of heterogeneity in house price growth expectations for the level of house prices. We feed the joint empirical distributions of income, wealth and...

The near-rationality hypothesis holds that even very small costs of optimization may lead people to act suboptimally. We embed this idea in a standard model of consumption-savings decisions: households pursue simple quick-fix consumption policies unless they pay a cost to optimize. We design a...

Can concern with relative standing, which has been shown to influence consumption and labor supply, also increase borrowing and the likelihood of financial distress? We find that perceived peer income contributes to debt and the likelihood of financial distress among those who consider...