In a context in which individuals might default on their debts and subsequently be excluded from credit markets, holding money helps agents smooth their consumption during periods in which they cannot borrow. Therefore holding money makes the punishment to default less severe. In this context,...

The Bank of England started with Quantitative Easing in 2009 and bought U.K. Gilts for £445 billion. The Bank subsequently bought a further £450 billion. The Bank recently increased its key interest rate to 3%. The pressure on household's budgets is immense. This paper proposes a different...

The Bank of International Settlement in its latest report demonstrates how the inflation levels, especially of food and energy prices have affected the behaviour of households in the U.S and in other countries. This paper aims to set out a method to use home equity as a policy tool for the...

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I study how the proportion of fixed and variable-rate mortgages in an economy can affect the way shocks are propagated. Second, I analyze optimal implementable simple monetary policy rules and the welfare implications of this proportion. I develop and...

This paper studies the implications of cross-country housing market heterogeneity for a monetary union, also comparing the results with a flexible exchange rate and independent monetary policy setting. I develop a two-country new Keynesian general equilibrium model with housing and collateral...

The corona virus pandemic has dramatically changed the economic outlook for the United States and many other countries. In June this year, the Federal Reserve published its unemployment predictions. From a July 2020 level of 10.2%, it expects the year-end ratio to drop to 9.3%; by the end of...

The aim of this paper is to analyse the determinants of gold prices in Pakistan and to deduce long run co-integration between them, if any. The impact of global gold prices, interest rates, foreign exchange rates, silver prices and stock market performance have been measured on the gold prices...

Several studies attributed the rise of household bankruptcy in the past two decades to the decline of social stigma associated with default. Stigma explanations, however, cannot account for the increase of credit availability during this period. I try to explain both of these facts as a result...

There is widespread disagreement about the role of housing wealth in explaining consumption. Much of the empirical literature is marred by poor controls for the common drivers both of house prices and consumption, including income, income growth expectations, interest rates, credit supply...

This paper develops a macroeconomic model of the interaction between consumer debt and firm debt over the business cycle. I incorporate interest rate spreads generated by firm and household loan default risk into a real business cycle model. I estimate the model on US aggregate data. This allows...