This paper examines the contributions of population aging, mortgage innovation and historically low interest rates to the sharp rise in U.S. house prices and mortgage debt between 1994 and 2005. I construct an overlapping generations general equilibrium housing model and find that these three...

Households who wish to extract home equity through refinancing their mortgage face a hidden transaction cost. The real value of the fixed nominal mortgage payment declines over time with inflation. The change in the real value of the mortgage payments from taking on a new mortgage is positive...

This paper studies the macroeconomic effects of implicit government guarantees of the obligations of government-sponsored enterprises. We construct a model with competitive housing and mortgage markets in which the government provides banks with insurance against aggregate shocks to mortgage...

Housing tenure decision combines financial, economic and sociopsychological factors. This paper considers the global premium associated to homeownership. On the one hand, homeownership is associated to private benefits of being an owner. On the other hand, overinvestment in housing is harmful to...

Macroprudential policy improves economic outcomes by reducing the likelihood and severity of financial crises. Yet it is pertinent to ask, are there unintended long run consequences to the introduction of a macroprudential policy regime, and are these consequences conditional on the a priori...

We study the transition in and out of homeownership during the 2008 housing market bust, using detailed micro-level data covering the entire Danish population. We document that homeownership decisions for certain groups of households are cyclical. Households which are affected more by falling...

This paper deals with the macroeconomic effects of government guarantees on debt issued by Government-Sponsored Enterprises. We set up an economy with a housing and mortgage market where the government provides banks with insurance against aggregate shocks to mortgage default risk. We then study...

This paper analyses the default option typical to American mortgages. House-holds borrow to buy durable housing, but future house prices are uncertain, and households find it advantageous to default on their debt if house prices fall suffi- ciently. A key assumption of the model is that...

Housing tenure decision combines financial, economic and socio-psychological factors. This paper considers the global premium associated to homeownership. On the one hand, homeownership is associated to private benefits of being a landlord. On the other hand, overinvestment in housing is harmful...