We use archaeological data from ancient settlements of three different historical eras on a Greek island to construct novel measures of consumption. Using these, we show that luxury good consumption was higher closer to the center of nucleated settlements but shows no such pattern in a placebo...

Are households more likely to be homeowners when “housing risk” is higher? We show that home-ownership rates and loan-to-value (LTV ) ratios at the city level are strongly negatively correlated with local house price volatility. However, causal inference is confounded by house price levels,...

We specify and estimate a lifecycle model of consumption, housing demand and labor supply in an environment where individuals may file for bankruptcy or default on their mortgage. Uncertainty in the model is driven by house price shocks, education specific productivity shocks, and catastrophic...