We investigate the consumption consequences of the 2006 to 2009 housing collapse using the highly unequal geographic distribution of wealth losses across the United States. We estimate a large elasticity of consumption with respect to housing net worth of 0.6 to 0.8, which soundly rejects the...

We show that household leverage is an early and powerful predictor of the 2007 to 2009 recession. Counties in the U.S. that experienced a large increase in household leverage from 2002 to 2006 showed a sharp relative decline in durable consumption starting in the third quarter of 2006 – a full...

Rising income inequality since the 1980s in the United States has generated a substantial increase in saving by the top of the income distribution, which we call the saving glut of the rich. The saving glut of the rich has been as large as the global saving glut, and it has not been associated...

The well-documented rise in political polarization among the U.S. electorate over the past 20 years has been accompanied by a substantial increase in the effect of partisan bias on survey-based measures of economic expectations. Individuals have a more optimistic view on future economic...