Reverse mortgages allow elderly homeowners to tap into their housing wealth without having to sell or move out of their homes. However, very few eligible homeowners used reverse mortgages to achieve consumption smoothing until recently, when the reverse mortgage market in the U.S. witnessed...

This paper examines the impact of bank capital ratios on bank lending by comparing differences in loan growth to differences in capital ratios at sets of banks that are matched based on geographic area as well as size and various business characteristics. We argue that such comparisons are most...