Testimony prepared for “Sustainable Housing Finance: Private Sector Perspectives on Housing Finance Reform - Part IV” on December 6, 2017, before subcommittee on housing and insurance U.S. House of Representatives

We derive the optimal credit default swap premium a financial institution requires to assume the default risk of fixed income instruments. This premium is a function of the institution's capital and current exposure. In most cases, an institution requires an increasing premium to assume...

Existing data sources show divergent estimates of the number of homes purchased by first-time homebuyers as a share of all home purchases. In this paper, we use a new data set to construct a time series of the share of first-time homebuyers. This series, based on the Federal Reserve Bank of New...

This paper examines the house price boom that occurred simultaneously in the United States and in a number of European countries in 2003 to 2007. In the United States, Spain, Ireland, the UK, the Netherlands, and Denmark, a house price boom peaked in 2007 and, in each case, was accompanied by a...

This chapter contrasts the process of urbanization in China and in India. It characterizes the differences in outcomes with regard to the provision of urban infrastructure and the development of informality in each country. The role of local autonomy and governance structures help to explain...