The effects of exchange rate fluctuations across the population is an important issue for increasingly globalized economies. Previous studies using industry aggregate data have found differences across industries in the labor market implications of exchange rates, reporting that industry wages...

Between 1995 and 1998, actual growth in nominal compensation per hour (CPH) accelerated from approximately 2 percent to 5 percent. Yet as labor markets continued to tighten in 1999, the growth in CPH paradoxically slowed. In this article, we attempt to solve this aggregate wage puzzle by...

A stylized fact in the growing literature on public sector labor markets is that estimates of public sector union wage premia are significantly lower than estimates of private sector union wage premia. In this paper I investigate the hypothesis that this difference may in part be due to the...

Studies of public/private sector wage differentials typically assume that the govenment and union status of a worker are exogenous variables. Recently, some studies have relaxed this assumption slightly by allowing the union status to be endogenous. In this paper, we consider a more general...

We describe and evaluate the measures taken by the U.S. government to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in September 2008. We begin by outlining the business model of these two firms and their role in the U.S. housing finance system. Our focus then turns to the sources of financial distress that...

Federal Housing Administration (FHA) insurance has doubled over the past two years and is projected to redouble to $1.5 trillion over the next five. Despite clear signs of strain in the FHA's Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund, a recent actuarial review indicates that the FHA will not need any form...

In an environment of high foreclosure rates and distressed housing markets, federal policies are focusing on loan modifications to help delinquent homeowners pay their mortgages. While it is too soon to assess the effectiveness of these modifications, policymakers considering future refinements...

This paper provides updated estimates of the impact of three financial frictions—negative equity, mortgage lock-in, and property tax lock-in—on household mobility. We add the 2009 wave of the American Housing Survey (AHS) to our sample and also create an improved measure of permanent moves...