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

The homeownership rate began to trend upward in 1995 after years of being relatively constant, near 64 percent. This article describes recent changes in the share of U.S. housing that is owner-occupied and explores the reasons for the surprising rise over the past decade. Explanations that have...

This paper presents and estimates a simple model of real exchange rate determination that includes the expected future U.S. federal budget deficit as a determinant. The model is applied to the real value of the dollar versus the mark, yen, and pound over the period June 1974-October 1987. The...

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...