Prior research has found that job loss, as proxied for by regional unemployment rates, is a weak predictor of mortgage default. In contrast, using micro data from the PSID, this paper finds that job loss and adverse financial shocks are important determinants of mortgage default. Households with...

This paper studies how spousal bargaining power affects consumption patterns of married households in the US, using a detailed barcode-level dataset. We use two distribution factors as proxies for spousal bargaining power: (1) spouses’ relative education and (2) spouses’ relative potential...

This paper analyzes the intra-household distribution of wealth and welfare in the United States, within a theoretical framework based on a collective model of labor supply, where household decisions are Pareto efficient, and spouses negotiate a sharing rule for non-labor income. Using the...

Most econometric models of intrahousehold behavior assume that household decision-making is efficient, i.e., utility realizations lie on the Pareto frontier. In this paper we investigate this claim by adding a number of participation constraints to the household allocation problem. Short-run...

Pareto Efficiency is a core assumption of most models of household decision-making. We test this assumption using a new dataset covering the retirement saving contributions of over a million U.S. individuals. While a vast literature has failed to reject household efficiency in developed...

In most industrialized countries, more people than ever are having to cope with the burden of caring for elderly parents. This paper formulates a model to explain how parental care responsibilities and family structure interact children's mobility characteristics. A key insight we obtain is that...

Setting an application deadline is an important decision for a law school admissions committee because the deadline partly determines the quantity and quality of applications that a law school receives. As such, information that would help an admissions committee set its deadline appropriately...

The ratio of money demand to GDP may increase with portfolio demand, monetization, and a deeper division of labor. Using a cross-section approach to money demand for 126 countries this study shows that the share of agriculture, life expectancy at birth, openness, and trust in the banking system...

We analyze how sexual orientation is related to household savings using 2000 US Census data, and find that gay and lesbian couples own significantly more retirement income than heterosexuals, while cohabiting heterosexuals save more than their married counterparts. In a household savings model,...