We investigate the welfare consequences of consumer credit regulation in a dynamic, heterogeneous-agent model with endogenous lender market power. We incorporate a decentralized credit market with search and incomplete information frictions into an off-the-shelf Eaton-Gersovitz model of consumer...

I study how unsecured credit affects the extent to which unemployment insurance (UI) policies smooth cyclical fluctuations in aggregate consumption. To do so, I develop a real business cycle model with incomplete asset markets, frictional labor markets, and defaultable debt. Using empirically...

In the United States, 30% of households are coholders who simultaneously borrow on credit cards and hold liquid assets. This generates a rich distribution of gross wealth positions that underpins the distribution of net wealth often used to calibrate macroeconomic models. We show that, beyond...

There is widespread agreement that, in the United States, higher house prices raise consumption via collateral or possibly wealth effects. The presence of similar channels in Canada would have important implications for monetary policy transmission. We trace the impact of shifts in non-price...

This paper examines novel household-level data from the Canadian Survey of Consumer Expectations (CSCE) from 2014Q4 to 2022Q1 to understand households' expectations about price and wage inflation, their respective links to views about labour market conditions and their subsequent impact on...

How do households respond to unanticipated income shocks? I build and estimate a quantitative model of bounded rationality in which reoptimization is costly. Households respond to windfall income shocks by choosing a finite planning horizon over which to reoptimize. The optimal horizon is...

I study debt relief as a stimulus policy using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model that captures the rich heterogeneity in households' balance sheets. In this environment, a large-scale mortgage principal reduction can amplify a recovery, support house prices and lower foreclosures....

This paper uses a large historical dataset (1870-2016) for 16 industrial economies to show that during macroeconomic disasters (e.g., wars, pandemics, depressions) aggregate consumption and income are significantly less decoupled than during normal times. That is, during these times of turmoil,...

Models of microeconomic consumption (including those used in heterogeneous-agent macroeconomic models) typically calibrate the size of income risk to match panel data on household income dynamics. But, for several reasons, what is measured as risk from such data may not correspond to the risk...

Using micro data from the U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey and Current Population Survey, I document that government spending shocks affect individuals differently over the life cycle. Young households increase their consumption after an expansionary shock while prime-age households reduce it,...