This article tracks the history of sectoral saving and borrowing in the US economy over the past 50 years. We show that the financial imbalances that erupted in the financial crisis of 2008 were long in the making and preceded the emergence of global imbalances in the 2000s. These new dynamics...

Labor-supply effects of changes in house value are potentially important but empirically neglected. Using the panel Health and Retirement Study merged to local house prices from the Federal Housing Finance Agency, we estimate the effect of house-price changes on actual and planned retirement...

This paper examines five possible explanations for the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009, using data for the United States and the eurozone. Of these five hypotheses, four are not supported by the data, while the fifth appears reasonable.