We propose a quantitative model of lending standards with two reasons for inefficient credit: lenders' moral hazard from deposit insurance or government guarantees, and imperfect information about the persistence of asset price growth, which generates incorrect but rational beliefs in the...

This paper analyzes fertility and consumption decisions when the costs of raising a child and parents' income are stochastic and correlated. We model the decision to have a child similarly to the decision to exercise an option in finance literature. We obtain several new results relative to...

This paper surveys the literature that studies the connection between leverage and executive compensation. First, we discuss the dynamics of pay-for-performance compensation and how to measure it. Then we study the theoretical underpinnings of how firm leverage may be related to the compensation...

This paper analyzes banking crises using a quantitative model with equilibrium default for both firms and banks. The main results are: 1) small open economies have larger banking crises than closed or large economies. Constant international rates do not mitigate interbank spreads and amplify...

We show that a contraction of mortgage supply after the Great Recession has increased housing rents. Our empirical strategy exploits heterogeneity in MSAs' exposure to regulatory shocks experienced by lenders over the 2010-2014 period. Tighter lending standards have increased demand for rental...

Changes in country-specific aggregate volatility are positively correlated with the current account but negatively correlated with investment, output and credit flows. An International Real Business Cycle model with time-varying aggregate uncertainty, through a precautionary savings channel, can...

We analyze the removal of the credit-risk guarantees provided by the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) in a model with agents heterogeneous in income and house price risk. We find that wealth inequality increases, driven by higher mortgage spreads and housing rents. Housing holdings become...

We study policies that regulate executive compensation in a model that jointly determines executives' effort, compensation and firm leverage. The market failure that justifies regulation is that executives are optimistic about asset prices in states of distress. We show that shareholders propose...

This paper studies the role of housing markets in explaining recent current account dynamics. I document a strong negative correlation, both across and within countries, between housing and current account dynamics. Then, in a quantitative two-country model without exchange rate driven...

We analyze a model of mortgage markets, housing tenure choice, heterogeneous agents, and default with closed form solutions. We uncover new insights which may inspire empirical work, and we ground already-established insights in a series of tractable expressions. Then we study optimal LTV...