What shapes the optimal degree of progressivity of the tax and transfer system? On the one hand, a progressive tax system can counteract inequality in initial conditions and substitute for imperfect private insurance against idiosyncratic earnings risk. At the same time, progressivity reduces...

We combine publicly available data from Freddie Mac, the Decennial Census of Housing, and the Bureau of Economic Analysis to construct the first constant-quality aggregate price index for the stock of residential land in the United States. We uncover five main results: (a) since 1970,...

We investigate the welfare implications of changing a proportional capital income tax for a model economy in which heterogeneous households face labor income risk and trade only one asset. Labor taxes are adjusted at the time of the reform to maintain long run budget balance. Our stochastic...

This paper serves as an empirical companion piece for "Housing and the Business Cycle" by Davis and Heathcote (2000). A large part of the paper is devoted to documenting the growth, variability, and co-movement of major macroeconomic variables. We pay particular attention to the business cycle...

Over the period 1973-1985, the correlations of GDP, employment and investment between the United States and an aggregate of major trading partners were respectively 0.76, 0.67, and 0.61. Between 1986-1998 the same correlations were much lower: 0.25, -0.19, and 0.16 (real regionalization). At the...

In the United States, the percentage standard deviation of residential investment is more than twice that of non-residential investment. In addition, GDP, consumption, and both types of investment co-move positively. We reproduce these facts in a calibrated multi-sector growth model where...