Mortgage loans are a striking example of a persistent nominal rigidity. As a result, under incomplete markets, monetary policy affects decisions through the cost of new mortgage borrowing and the value of payments on outstanding debt. Observed debt levels and payment to income ratios suggest the...

This paper evaluates the role of the construction sector in accounting for the performance of the U.S. economy in the last decade. During the Great Recession (2008-09) employment in the construction sector experienced an unprecedented decline that followed the largest expansion in employment...

This article reviews the characteristics of different social security systems. Many configurations arise depending on the nature of a system’s funding and determination of benefits. Many reforms propose changing the U.S. Social Security system. The authors focus their analysis of the...

The authors study the interaction among population demographics, the desire for intergenerational redistribution of resources in the economy, and the optimal inflation rate in a deterministic life cycle economy with capital. Young cohorts initially have no assets and wages are the main source of...

We examine the optimal policy response to an exogenously given demographic shock. Such a shock affects negatively the financing of retirement pensions, and we use optimal fiscal policy in order to determine the optimal strategy of the social security administration. Our approach provides...

We argue that a privatization of the social security system, going from a Pay-As-You-Go to a Fully Funded system, can be interpreted as the explicit recognition of an implicit debt and there is no efficiency gain in doing so. As a consequence, potential efficiency gains upon reforming the system...

In this paper we show that the generational accounting framework used in macroeconomics to measure tax incidence can, in some cases, yield inaccurate measurements of the tax burden across age cohorts. This result is very important for policy evaluation, because it shows that the selection of tax...

May 30, 2012. "Demographics, Redistribution, and Optimal Inflation," with Carlos Garriga and Christopher J. Waller. Presented by Christopher Waller at the 2012 BOJ-IMES Conference Demographic Changes and Macroeconomic Performance.

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...

In this paper we use a standard neoclassical model supplemented by some frictions to understand large price swings in the housing market. We construct a two good general equilibrium model in which housing is a composite good produced using structures and land. We revisit the connection between...