The corporate income tax rate in the U.S. is almost forty percent. This high tax rate has been associated with depressing employment growth. Cutting or even eliminating corporate income tax has been proposed during the recent presidential campaigns based on the idea that a lower tax rate can...

After the collapse of housing markets during the Great Depression, the government played a large role shaping the future of the housing .nance, housing policy in the New Deal, as well as the development of the GI Bill for war veterans that had signi.cant importance for mortgage .nance and...

Foreclosure rates have soared during the recent housing crisis. In this paper we argue that exploring the implications of the legal environment pertinent to foreclosures is very relevant to the understanding of the macroeconomic transmission of the financial crises. Foreclosure law is designed...

This paper describes a quantitative model developed to understand the key determinats of house prices boom-and-bust cycles. The key driving forces behind the boom are residential investment, immigration, current account deficits, relaxation of downpayment constraints, and the elimination of land...

The empirical evidence from the last decade suggests that sizeable increases in housing defaults can be the result of either income shocks (recession 2001) or changes in the market value of the house (2005-2007 period). The objective of this paper is to understand the double feedback mechanism...

The last decade has brought about substantial mortgage innovation and increased refinancing. The objective of this paper is to understand the determinants and implications of mortgage choice in the context of a general equilibrium model with incomplete markets. The equilibrium characterization...

Dynamic open economy models with time-separable, deterministic utilities fail to account for observed dynamics of exchange rates and international relative prices and quantities. This paper examines the ability of extensions of existing open economy models to account for exchange rates,...

This paper examines some of the more recent mortgage products now available to borrowers. The authors describe how these products differ across important characteristics, such as the down payment requirement, repayment structure, and amortization schedule. The paper also presents a model with...

After the collapse of housing markets during the Great Depression, the U.S. government played a large role in shaping the future of housing finance and policy. Soon thereafter, housing markets witnessed the largest boom in recent history. The objective in this paper is to quantify the...