Foreclosure rates have soared during the recent housing crisis. In this paper we argue that exploring the implications of the legal environment pertinent to foreclosures is very relevant to the understanding of the macroeconomic transmission of the financial crises. Foreclosure law is designed...

This paper describes a quantitative model developed to understand the key determinats of house prices boom-and-bust cycles. The key driving forces behind the boom are residential investment, immigration, current account deficits, relaxation of downpayment constraints, and the elimination of land...

The empirical evidence from the last decade suggests that sizeable increases in housing defaults can be the result of either income shocks (recession 2001) or changes in the market value of the house (2005-2007 period). The objective of this paper is to understand the double feedback mechanism...

Empirical research has been conducted on the various theories of the business cycle over many countries. However, very little research has attempted to undertake a multi-country disaggregate investigation into the sources of output change. This paper decomposes fluctuations in industry output in...

This paper explores life insurance holdings from a general equilibrium perspective. Drawing on the data explored in Chambers, Schlagenhauf, and Young (2003), we calibrate an overlapping generation's life cycle economy with incomplete asset markets to match facts regarding the uncertainty of...

We quantify the effects of population aging on the U.S. healthcare system. Our analysis is based on a stochastic general equilibrium overlapping generations model of endogenous health accumulation calibrated to match pre-2010 U.S. data. We find that population aging not only leads to large...