This paper uses mortgage data to construct a measure of terms on which households access to external finance, and relates it to consumption at both the aggregate and cohort levels. The Household External Finance (HEF) index is based on the spread paid by risky borrowers in the mortgage market....

According to Brazilian law, federal transfers to municipal governments change discontinuously at numerous predetermined population thresholds. We employ a 'fuzzy' regression discontinuity design to identify the causal effect of federal transfers on local economic activity. The analysis points to...

This paper exploits the 2008–09 stamp duty holiday in the United Kingdom to estimate the incidence of a transaction tax on housing. The average reduction in the after-tax sale price is found to be around £900 against the backdrop of an average tax reduction of about £1500. While we estimate...

Almost half of American families did not adjust their consumption following receipt of the 2001 or 2008 tax rebates. Another 20%, with low income and more likely to rent, spent a small but significant amount. Households with large spending propensity held high mortgage debt. The heterogeneity is...

Does the transmission of economic policies and structural shocks vary with the state of the economy? We answer this question using a strategy based on quantile regressions, which account for both endogeneous regressors and state-dependent parameters. An application to U.S. real activity and...