Beginning in the 1990s, the growth of mortgage lending was associated with the growth of a new set of mortgage-backed securities. We study the evolution of initial mortgage rates as a function of characteristics of both the loan and the borrower. We find that credit risk historically was priced...

We formulate the central bank's problem of selecting an optimal long-run inflation rate as the choice of a distorting tax by a planner who wishes to maximize discounted stationary utility for a heterogeneous population of infinitely-lived households in an economy with constant aggregate income....

This paper analyzes the relationship among inflation, dollarization, financial intermediation, and real activity. Empirical evidence suggests non-linearity in the effects of inflation on financial intermediation and real activity, i.e., the existence of an inflation threshold. Evidence also...