The last two U.S. expansions have been unusually long. One view is that this is the result of luck, of an absence of major adverse shocks over the last twenty years. We argue that more is at work, namely a large underlying decline in output volatility. This decline is not a recent development,...

Piketty (2014) documents how the share of aggregate income going to capital in the United States has risen in the post-war era. Rognlie (2015) has since shown that this is largely due to the housing sector. This paper explores the determinants of the secular rise in the share of housing capital...