The collapse of the housing boom led to an unprecedented number of homeowners who are íunderwaterî, that is, owe more on their mortgage than their homes are worth. These homeowners cannot move without incurring significant losses on their homes, possibly causing a ílock-inî effect reducing...

This paper is the first to explore the effects of school accountability systems on high-achieving students' long-term performance. Using exceptional data from a large highly-selective state university, we relate school accountability pressure in high school to a student's university-level grades...

Lamont (1997) claims to find evidence of credit market imperfections that distort financing and investment decisions of a sample of oil-dependent firms, as investment by non-oil units fell when oil cash flow dropped. However, a simple test reveals that few of these firms behaved in a fashion...

Why are housing markets so prone to boom-bust cycles? The mortgage market structure prior to the Savings and Loan crisis contributed to the volatility in real housing activity which, in turn, amplified the volatility in housing prices. The subsequent development of a national, market-based...

Cash holdings of nonfinancial firms range widely, and are related to firm size, industry and access to the public bond market. Cash holdings are positively correlated with agency proxies, suggesting that firms that cannot borrow easily due to agency problems hold greater cash stocks--perhaps as...