This paper models the housing sector, mortgages and endogenous default in a DSGE setting with nominal and real rigidities. We use data for the period 1981-2006 to estimate our model using Bayesian techniques. We analyze how an increase in risk in the mortgage market raises the default rate and...

Motivated by the apparent failure of the credit multiplier mechanism (CM) to deliver amplification in DSGE models, we re-examine its role in business cycles to address the question: is something wrong with the CM? Our answer is no. In coming to this answer we construct a model with reproducible...