We explore how personality traits are related to household borrowing behavior. Using survey data representative for the Netherlands, we consider the Big Five personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, extraversion and neuroticism), as well as the belief that one is master of...

We study the effect of borrowing constraints in an assignment model of the housing market. When constraints apply symmetrically to all households, these lead to lower prices but unchanged housing consumption. When households can invest their own wealth and may differ in tastes, borrowing...

We provide an analysis that might help distinguish rationally justified movements in house prices from potentially non-rational movements, using a two-sector business cycle model, in which investment in housing is subject to collateral constraints. A large portion of the evolution of U.S. house...

We present data from the Survey of Consumer Finances showing that the increased earnings (labor income) inequality, in combination with increased stockmarket participation, has roughly doubled stockholders' share of aggregate labor income in the last four decades. We explore the impact of the...

As wages in migrant sending countries catch up with those in destinations, migrants adjust on several margins, including their duration of stay, the number of migrations they undertake, as well as the amount saved while abroad. This paper combines Mexican and U.S. data to estimate a dynamic...

Smoother labor incomes alleviate credit constraints by reducing workers' desire to borrow, and prospects of upward income mobility have smaller beneficial effects for currently poor workers when borrowing constraints are binding. These simple theoretical insights are consistent with the...

From 1995 to 2005, the average urban household saving rate in China rose by 8 percentage points, to about one quarter of disposable income. We use household-level data to explain why households are postponing consumption despite rapid income growth. Tracing cohorts over time indicates a virtual...

Die Finanzreform des Jahres 2006 war im Wesentlichen darauf gerichtet, die Entscheidungsblockaden zwischen Bund und Ländern durch die Reduzierung zustimmungsbedürftiger Gesetzte aufzubrechen. Die Föderalismuskommission II diskutiert nunmehr weitere Reformen der Finanzverfassung. In der...

This paper uses micro data from four OECD countries (the United States, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands), to assess the determinants of household debt holding and to investigate whether or not credit constraints are important for household debt holding. We extend the existing literature in...

In this paper, we analyze the determinants of corporate saving in the form of changes in the stock of cash for 11 Asian economies using firm-level data from the Oriana Database for the 2002 - 2011 period. We find some evidence that cash flow has a positive impact on the change in the stock of...