Focusing on localized measures of bank health and economic activity, and renters as well as homeowners, this paper uses an innovative approach to identifying households likely in need of credit to investigate the effect on household spending of a deterioration in local-bank health. The analysis...

There are more young adults today with either no credit history or insufficient credit history to be scored by one of the major credit bureaus than there were before the Great Recession−a reality that is likely an unintended outcome of the CARD Act of 2009. In regressions that include a rich...

This paper examines the effect of minimum wage changes on local aggregate inflation and consumption growth. The paper utilizes variation in state-level minimum wages across locations and finds that minimum wage increases have a relatively modest effect on both city-level inflation and spending...

Rising house prices affect household spending by either loosening a household's lifetime budget constraint (pure wealth effect) or the household's borrowing constraint so that consumption rises toward the level implied by the consumption Euler equation (borrowing collateral effect). The...

This paper examines whether rising house prices immediately prior to children entering college have an impact on their earnings as adults. Higher house prices provide homeowners with additional funding to invest in their children’s human capital but also raise housing costs. The results show...

This paper examines whether rising house prices immediately prior to children entering their college years impacts their intergenerational earnings mobility and/or educational outcomes. Higher house prices provide homeowners, especially liquidity constrained ones, with additional funding to...

Deleveraging is the process by which households decide that their level of debt is inconsistent with their revised economic outlook and adjust their leverage accordingly, primarily by substituting debt repayment for consumption. Household deleveraging is a commonly cited reason for the sluggish...

This paper analyzes household formation in the United States using data from two cohorts of the national Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) — the 1979 cohort and the 1997 cohort. The analysis focuses on how various demographic and economic factors impact household formation both within...

Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this paper examines how households' home equity extraction during the previous decade affected their spending and saving behavior.The study makes use of recently released 2009 housing and wealth data as well as the extensive data on household...