In an attempt to keep up with the social standards defined by their peer group, households can use long-term collateralised lending to finance purchases of goods that signal social value - most notably, real estate. Because in the social status game somebody's advance is always somebody else's...

While all segments of society have been impacted by the economic downturn of the past decade, some groups have suffered more than others. This research finds that Hispanic households were about twice as likely in 2010 to be seriously delinquent on debt payments as in 2004. During the same time...

We study optimal monetary policy in an economy with nominal private debt, borrowing constraints and price rigidity. Private debt reflects equilibrium trade between an impatient borrower, who faces an endogenous collateral constraint, and a patient saver, who engages in consumption smoothing....

We use a linked housing transaction dataset and a personal bankruptcy dataset to study the impact of housing credit on personal bankruptcy in Singapore. Using a difference-in-differences (DD) approach, we find that an increase in housing credit increases the monthly instalment by 560-900...