This paper evaluates the macroeconomic and distributional effects of government bailout guarantees for Government Sponsored Enterprises (such as Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac) in the mortgage market. In order to do so we construct a model with heterogeneous, infinitely lived households and...

We study the optimal provision of unemployment insurance (UI) over the business cycle. We use an equilibrium search and matching model with aggregate shocks to labor productivity, incorporating risk-averse workers, endogenous worker search effort decisions, and unemployment benefit expiration....

I develop an equilibrium model of housing and default to jointly analyze the effects of bankruptcy and foreclosure policies. Heterogeneous households have access to mortgages and unsecured credit and can default separately on both types of debt. I show that the interaction between foreclosure...

The last three recessions in the United States were followed by jobless recoveries: while labor productivity recovered, unemployment remained high. In this paper, we show that countercyclical unemployment benefit extensions lead to jobless recoveries. We augment the standard Mortensen-Pissarides...

We study the optimal provision of unemployment insurance (UI) over the business cycle. We consider an equilibrium Mortensen-Pissarides search and matching model with risk-averse workers and aggregate shocks to labor productivity. Both the vacancy creation decisions of firms and the search effort...

This paper constructs a dynamic model of health insurance to evaluate the short- and long run effects of policies that prevent firms from conditioning wages on health conditions of their workers, and that prevent health insurance companies from charging individuals with adverse health conditions...

To slow COVID-19, many countries have shut down part of the economy. Older individuals have the most to gain from slowing virus diffusion. Younger workers in sectors that are shuttered have most to lose. In this paper, we build a model in which economic activity and disease progression are...

In 2015-2016 Germany experienced a wave of predominantly low-skilled refugee immigration. We evaluate its macroeconomic and distributional effects using a quantitative overlapping generations model calibrated using German micro data to replicate education and productivity differentials between...

How much additional tax revenue can the government generate by increasing the level of labor income taxes? In this paper we argue that the degree of tax progressivity is a quantitatively important determinant of the answer to this question. To make this point we develop a large scale overlapping...

We propose a new category of consumption goods, memorable goods, that generate a flow of utility after consumption. We analyze an otherwise standard consumption model that distinguishes memorable goods from other nondurable goods. Consumers optimally choose lumpy consumption of memorable goods....