House prices have inertia, which may be because housing-market participants need time to recognize long booms and recessions. Within a dynamic stochastic general-equilibrium model with markets for housing and defaultable mortgages, I consider the case of imperfect knowledge and learning about...

Based on OECD evidence, equity/housing-price busts and credit crunches are followed by substantial increases in public consumption. These increases in unproductive public spending lead to increases in distortionary marginal taxes, a policy in sharp contrast with presumably optimal Keynesian...