The 'saving for a rainy day' hypothesis implies that households' saving decisions reflect that they can (rationally) predict future income declines. The empirical relevance of this hypothesis plays a key role in discussions of fiscal policy multipliers and it holds under the null that the...

With regard to the recent US house price cycle, we analyze how the interaction between housing supply restrictions, mortgage credit constraints and a price-to-price feedback loop affects house price volatility. Considering 247 Metropolitan Statistical Areas, we estimate a simultaneous boom-bust...

A central theme in the international debate on genetic testing concerns the extent to which insurance companies should be allowed to use genetic information in their design of insurance contracts. We analyze this issue within a model with the following important feature: A person s well-being...

We analyze optimal wealth management, within a global setting, where accumulation of GHGs caused by extraction of fossil resources affects the probability distribution for hitting a threshold or tipping point, indicating a climate change. We derive an optimal strategy for overall wealth...

We derive policy rules for a highly aggregated fossil-based world economy with two competing stochastic thresholds or tipping points. Current production generates emissions that add to a stock of GHGs that affect the probability distribution of hitting a climate threshold with severe...