<p>We document that home ownership of households with 'heads' aged 25-44 years fell substantially between 1980 and 2000 and recovered only partially during the 2001-2005 housing boom. The 1980-2000 decline in young home ownership occurred as improvements in mortgage opportunities made it easier to...</p>

This paper studies the impact of the preferential tax treatment of housing capital in a model economy that includes the main housing tax provisions currently in place in the U.S. and a minimum downpayment requirement upon purchasing non-divisible houses. Distortions arise because the tax code...

Like other macroeconomic variables, residential investment has become much less volatile since the mid-1980s (recent experience notwithstanding.) This paper explores the role of structural change in this decline. Since the early 1980s there have been many changes in the underlying structure of...

We use the US Survey of Consumer Finances to measure the change in federal tax liability that would result should mortgage interest no longer be deductible from taxable income. We argue that the elimination of this housing tax provision would lead households to reshuffle their balance sheet,...

This paper studies the choice between general and specific human capital. A trade-off arises because general human capital, while less productive, can easily be reallocated across firms. Accordingly, the fraction of individuals with specific human capital depends on the amount of uncertainty in...

In this paper, we document some features of the distribution of income, consumption and wealth in Canada using survey data from many different sources. We find that wage and income inequality has increased substantially over the last 30 years, but that much of this rise was offset by the tax and...

The search‐and‐matching model of the labor market fails to match two important business cycle facts: (i) a high volatility of unemployment relative to labor productivity, and (ii) a mild correlation between these two variables. We address these shortcomings by focusing on technological...

Over the last few decades, several economies have experienced a reduction in the volatility of output and a rise in wage dispersion. This paper investigates the appropriate labor market policy response to these changes. We introduce unemployment benets nanced by a proportional payroll tax within...

ex-ante appropriate (good) institutions may appear to be bad ex-post as they make economies vulnerable to shocks such as turbulence. As an example, the firing restrictions in Europe and Japan, which appear to be an inefficient institution ex-post, may have been a part of an efficient arrangement...

steep decline in residential investment since 2005.